Welcome and congratulations to you for making it into the DMS AVID program! Your hard work and dedication will help this year be very successful. The AVID team (A Team!) is looking forward to providing you with an enriching experience that will help prepare you for a fantastic future.

The AVID program is designed to prepare students for success in middle school, high school and college. This will be done by holding tutorials, teaching organizational skills, and developing the learning process with critical thinking skills.

AVID is an acronym for Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) and is a college preparatory program designed to increase the number of students who are eligible for admission to the University of California, California State University and four year private colleges and universities.

Students will be expected to keep a 2” three ring binder with all the notes and materials from their other classes. They will be taught how to organize the binder and it will be checked every other Friday. Within the binder they will also be taking a variety of focused notes, which will organize their review material and their learning.

Students will be engaged in activities designed to develop the learning process. These activities include writing assignments, Socratic Seminars, group problem solving, and in class projects. We will also be doing goal setting and a plan of how to achieve their goals.

Will be discussed on the first day of class and in depth course outline and content standards are available upon request.

Team Building Progress Monitoring Organization Skills

Reading Essay Writing Writing Activities

Portfolio Building High School and College Readiness Curriculum

College and Career Research

In addition to introducing students to the AVID method, students will be learning valuable computer skills throughout the year. The following are just a few of the topics we will focus on this year:

Internet Safety/Email Google Apps Typing Skills

Computer Coding

The expectations listed below were designed to create a safe learning environment where students will succeed. Discuss these expectations with an adult at home. As a student of Dartmouth Middle School, you are expected to follow the PBIS model or Positive Behavior Intervention Support.

1. Be respectful

2. Be responsible

3. Be safe

Unfortunately, students make poor choices from time to time. Here are the consequences that follow the Dartmouth Middle School guidelines in the student planner:

1^st offense time: Reteach behavior and parent contact – Pre-referral entered in Aeries

2^nd offense: Reteach behavior, 5 minute timeout/reflection and parent contact - Pre-referral entered in Aeries

3^rd offense: Reteach behavior, 10 min reflection paper and parent contact - Pre-referral entered in Aeries

4^th offense: Office referral

1. Positive notes/Phone calls home

2. PBIS Points

3. Friday reward time – usually every other Friday if all assignments are complete

Most work will be done in class. However, there are certain projects that will need to be done at home and 100% homework is expected. Tutorial reflections will be the majority of the homework and should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Check the planner nightly for assignments.

1. Digital Binders and Planners – 30%

2. Tutorials – 30%

3. Computer Projects - 20%

4. AVID Classwork – 20%