AVID’s professional learning modules are central to AVID’s continuous professional learning system. The modules are constantly being revised and updated according to new research and learning from our schools. Each module can be customised to your school’s specific context. It can be overwhelming to try and read through so many modules, so a great way to get into this resource is to share it with your site team and do a jigsaw reading of what is on offer. A conversation with your AVID Coach can also help demystify how best to use your professional learning days to maximise your outcomes.
Participants will learn how to improve students’ literacy outcomes by using AVID’s Critical Reading Process that extends reading and writing into opportunities for deeper collaboration and metacognitive processing core-content areas. The intended audience for this modules is instructional and content teachers.
This module adapts WICOR strategies to support teachers of the Arts, Technologies, Health and Physical Education and Languages. We will identify how WICOR can enhance learning in these content areas, apply critical reading strategies using AVID Australia Monthly, and practise Socratic Seminars customised for these learning areas. The intended audience for this module is teachers from these learning areas across primary and secondary AVID schools.
This module is recommended for schools new to AVID. It provides an overview of research-informed philosophies and methodologies that underpin the AVID schoolwide improvement system. The four domains of AVID are introduced: Leadership, Culture, Instruction, Systems. AVID’s teaching and learning framework, WICOR, is introduced. Participants will practise applying AVID’s high engagement teaching and learning strategies to their classroom contexts as well as collaborating with colleagues to learn how consistent schoolwide approaches to teaching and learning using AVID’s high engagement strategies can improve the quality of teaching and learning for all students and teachers over time.
The AVID Australia Coordinator/Coach will take site team members and leadership through AVID’s observation instruments. They will visit classrooms to practise using the observation framework and tools. Observers will learn how to engage in coaching discussions that encourage rigour in the consistent implementation of AVID methodologies. The intended audience for this module is AVID Coordinators, AVID teachers, instructional coaches and leadership.
Participants will analyse the differences between summary and reflection activities. Activities include how to coach students to higher-level reflections and summaries. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers.
Participants will analyse similarities and differences between a cognitive organisation (organisation of thought) and an operational organisation (organisation of time and space) to prepare their students effectively to develop skills in both as they become post-secondary and work ready. Various graphic organisers will be used to support each process. Participants create effective cognitive structures across curriculum areas to develop students’ cognitive and organisational development. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers and schoolwide secondary teachers.
In this module, participants explore the concepts of defined autonomy and collaborative teacher efficacy. We consider the critical role of vision in organisational leadership and explore how effective organisations articulate clear mission and vision statements to mobilise and motivate their communities to commit to a shared moral purpose. Participants will explore the concept of collaborative teacher efficacy as it applies at their school. Participants are introduced to the concept of defined autonomy as it applies to collaborative leadership and its intersection with goal-driven improvement processes. The module develops individual personal action plans with the intention of strengthening collaborative leadership at their site.
Participants will understand how to implement and apply collaborative study groups (CSGs) within their classrooms. Participants will experience how students in CSGs can identify a specific question from any content area; collaborate to develop and deepen their understanding through Socratic inquiry, and apply their new learning in order to enhance their individual and collective classroom experiences. CSGs are a critical component of expaning AVID strategies schoolwide. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective teachers, content area teachers and administrators. This module requires a minimum of three hours to complete. It can be extended to a whole day for schools to delve deeper into CSGs and develop a consistent schoolwide application strategy and processes.
This module focusses teachers on assisting their students in developing rigorous questions for content other than maths when preparing their Teacher Request Forms (TRFs). Participants will learn to scaffold students through the understanding and use of the TRF process. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers and AVID Students.
Participants will learn the similarities and differences in applying consistent approaches to developing literacy across all content areas. Participants will adapt critical reading strategies to support content-specific literacy for their learning area, and develop a plan for teaching and reinforcing effective reading strategies in their classes in addition to teaching their content. The intended audience for this module is secondary content area teachers.
Participants will learn how to implement scaffolded Socratic Seminars to increase students’ levels of academic literacy and content knowledge. These strategies prepare students for tertiary and work readiness. We will develop an action plan for Socratic Seminar implementation in participants’ classes. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective teachers and schoolwide secondary teachers.
The purpose of this module is to introduce AVID’s 4 As Framework (Adopt, Adapt, Accelerate, and Advocate) to experience a digital critical reading process. Participants will need a laptop and internet access.
Participants will review the systems currently in place at their school. Based on this analysis, learning teams will develop, implement, and monitor schoolwide organisational systems focused on increasing student success and Tertiary and Career Readiness.
In this module, participants will analyse schoolwide organisational strategies that improve student success, post-secondary and work readiness. Participants will identify ways to leverage these strategies to build schoolwide systems, so all students can develop the organisational skills necessary to succeed in post-secondary education and the workforce. Participants will use the AVID Schoolwide Strategy Planning Guide to begin crafting effective systems for deepening AVID
schoolwide consistently across their school. The intended audience for this modules is AVID Site Team members and AVID Elective teachers.
This module is designed for teachers of all content areas as they guide students to develop disciplinary literacy. Participants will learn strategies to enhance student writing for specific disciplines using mentor texts. The focus is on why mentor texts are beneficial for students, what mentor texts are, and how they can be used with students to teach and support them as they develop as writers within various disciplines.
Participants will learn how to develop high-quality professional learning workshops that build instructional capacity at their school through increasing the consistent implementation of AVID strategies schoolwide. Participants will explore how consistently WICOR strategies are used schoolwide, explore professional learning models/methods that could enhance the rigour and fidelity of their AVID implementation, explore AVID professional learning resources they can access to deliver quality professional learning workshops, and explore feedback and observation tools that are available through AVID. The intended audience for this module is AVID Site Coordinators, leadership, and AVID Site Team members.
This module is designed to support sites in identifying the qualities of teacher leaders that support schoolwide improvement in teaching and learning and AVID implementation. We examine teacher leadership through the Site Team Plan to identify leadership traits and characteristics that have led to the success of AVID, as well as to identify gaps in leadership that will need to be improved to deepen AVID implementation. The intended audience for this module is AVID Coordinators, teachers, AVID Site Team members, and leadership.
This module supports teachers learning how to meet the needs of all learners in their classroom by adapting content and instructional practices. Participants will examine what differentiated instruction is and is not. They will analyse how to adapt high engagement instructional practices through WICOR across disciplines and year levels. Participants will also consider the learning needs of their students and identify how to adapt learning material to enhance their learning outcomes. The intended audience for this module is instructional and content teachers.
The purpose of this module is to teach participants about theirs and their students’ digital footprints. The module supports participants in understanding how their digital footprint result from digital actions can be under or beyond their control. The things we do online can impact our personal digital footprint and that of others. Participants will define the term digital footprint, determine how much control one has over their digital footprint, and identify how they can contribute to a positive digital reputation, both for themselves and for others. The intended audience for this modules is instructional, technology and content teachers.
The purpose of this module is to teach participants how to be critical consumers of media and social media posts. This module provides tools and strategies to support students to evaluate and validate media for accuracy and bias. Participants will learn, practise and apply strategies for checking if media activities are real or fake.
Participants will integrate technology-based critical reading strategies in order to develop post-secondary and work- ready readers who can successfully engage in rigorous reading, deep analysis of text structures and deconstruction of content. Participants will incorporate the AVID Digital Learning Framework with critical reading strategies in order to choose digital tools and critical reading strategies that enable students to interact with digital texts that enhance their learning with technology. The intended audience for this module is instructional and content teachers.
Participants will analyse their current lesson planning strategies and learn to troubleshoot barriers to student learning inside the AVID Elective class. Collaborative strategies will be used to model how AVID teachers can support each other to select appropriate high engagement teaching and learning strategies that increase rigour in lesson planning and deliver effective, rigorous instruction. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective teachers and the module is suitable for a more collaborative schoolwide peer-support model of teaching and learning support.
This module draws on Carol Dweck’s work to learn the difference between fixed and growth mindsets. The module explores the effect of praise and feedback in supporting students to develop stronger metacognitive skills, ownership of their learning, build academic success, and improve health and wellbeing outcomes. Teachers practise how to encourage students to move from fixed to growth mindsets with consistent schoolwide practices embedded over time. The intended audience for this module is teachers, support staff, site team members, and leadership.
This module maximises the benefits of sending staff to AVID professional learning activities, including Summer Institute. Learning from this module will accelerate your schoolwide success in implementing AVID practices with rigour and consistency. Participants will learn and use AVID Adult Learning Practices to re-teach AVID strategies to staff throughout the year. Members of the leadership and site teams will learn how to build professional learning communities that enhance consistency in AVID implementation schoolwide. The intended audience for this module is Site Team members, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, and leadership.
Participants will delve into the tutorial process and focus on how to enable AVID Elective students to effectively apply the 10 steps of AVID’s tutorial process. Strategies to increase student rigour in completing the Tutorial Request Form will be investigated. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers.
This module is designed to coach teachers through the why and how of an Interactive Notebook (INB). The process for setting up an entry in the notebook typically utilises the model of right side for direct input and left side for processing output of each entry. In this module, participants are able to explore alternative ways to use Interactive Notebooks (INBs) to suit their students’ learning needs. Participants will engage in a variety of collaborative learning activities for planning lessons utilising INBs. INBs provide structures for students to dive deeper into content and take ownership of their learning by strengthening their metacognitive processing. Participants learn how to integrate INBs into daily lessons so that students have multiple opportunities to interact with and process content to develop tertiary, workplace, and life organisational skills. The intended audience for this module is instructional and content teachers.
This module is designed to teach participants how AVID philosophies and strategies can align with and strengthen their school’s strategic plan by providing a catalyst for schoolwide improvement. Participants will analyse how AVID’s underpinning theoretical frameworks, structures and resources can complement and strengthen the implementation of other initiatives at their schools. Participants will explore how AVID integrates systemically with other school initiatives. Participants will analyse aspects of their school’s strengths and weaknesses using AVID’s four domains: Instruction, Systems, Leadership and Culture. We will explore how to align AVID with other state/regional or departmental school improvement initiatives. The intended audience for this module is primary and secondary teachers, instructional coaches and leadership.
This workshop further explores various ways students utilise Focused Note-Taking strategies in Maths classes and analyses everyday practices, including various collaborative and organisational practices that can be implemented on a variety of levels. The intended audience for this module is teachers of mathematics and instructional coaches.
The purpose of this module is to support participants and their students in developing a healthy media balance. Students are taught to recognise the connection between the types of media they use, how long they use it, and how they feel. Using the “What? When? How Much? Framework,” students reflect on their past media use and then create a plan for future media use that demonstrates a healthier balance.
During this module, participants will have an opportunity to explore AVID resources that assist in increasing the organisational skills of their students, better preparing them for success. Participants will discuss best practices and how to increase the effectiveness of strategies they are already using in their classrooms. Finally, participants will review the vertical alignment of organisational strategies to ensure usage is increasing and being refined annually.
Participants will learn how to provide students with skills, strategies, and techniques to navigate and practice various on-demand/timed writing requirements of specific content areas, e.g., writing short answer responses and essays. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers and schoolwide secondary teachers whose content area has specific writing components.
In the Philosophical Chairs module, participants will engage in WICOR strategies to plan for integration of Philosophical Chairs into their lessons. They will focus on building central questions to which contradictory positions exist. Participants will address these positions through deep, academic discourse in a structured, formal process.
Participants will learn how maintaining rigourous curriculum, teaching and learning impacts all students. Participants will apply AVID’s inquiry processes to increase rigour in teaching and learning activities that increase student engagement. The intended audience for this module is AVID Site Team members and AVID Elective teachers.
This module introduces three theories of scaffolding: Vygotsky (1978) and the Zone of Proximal Development; Mariani (1997) High Challenge, High Support; and Hammond & Gibbons (2005) Designed-in and Contingent Support. Participants will learn how to adapt the three theories of scaffolding for their content areas and will workshop their recent or upcoming lessons to consider how learning and teaching is scaffolded to maximise student success. The intended audience for this module is instructional coaches, teachers of all content areas and year levels.
This module is designed for Schoolwide content teachers to support the development of academic language and literacy in primary through higher education classroom settings. Participants will connect WICOR with intentional language development practices and routines that strengthen listening, speaking, reading, and writing literacy for all students at particular stages of development. AVID Schoolwide team members will gain insights and align their teaching and learning philosophies to support how students can navigate rigorous content, improve their academic achievement, and prepare for post-secondary and workplace success.
In this module, participants will explore how relational capacity and developing a growth mindset impacts student engagement, the individual and collective efficacy of adolescent students. Participants will learn high engagement classroom strategies to promote a positive classroom climate leading to student success. The intended audience for this module is instructional and content teachers.
The purpose of this module is to engage participants in dialogue and thinking around how Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) connects to online life and how they can support positive interactions for students online and while using technology. Participants will: analyse and draw conclusions from images that represent the role technology plays in our lives, engage in a collaborative opportunity to share key findings from Common Sense’s Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy, and Finding Balance document, consider digital dilemmas that students might experience and explore how these connect to SEL character strengths, and interact with Common Sense Education’s SEL Toolkit.
This module will strengthen use of the Socratic Seminar methodology by providing practise in how and when to use seminars across the content areas. The instructional focus is targeted toward increasing the student application of inquiry and collaboration in a variety of Socratic Seminar models. Participants will practise organising inquiry learning strategies and the structure of the seminar for different year levels. The intended audience for this module is schoolwide instructional and leadership staff.
This module provides strategies and guidelines for selecting AVID Elective teachers and Site Team Members. Participants will identify processes to ensure AVID students have access to rigorous courses schoolwide. The intended audience for this modules is AVID Site Coordinators, AVID Administrators, and AVID Site Team Members.
Participants will learn how to implement the five phases of Focused Note-Taking (FNT) in order to develop skills to support students’ learning, personal, and academic success. Participants will learn effective processes and formats for the development of focused note-taking skills across year levels and learning areas. The intended audience for this module is instructional and content teachers.
Participants will learn how to incorporate text-dependent questions as a part of the Critical Reading Process. Activities include: crafting text-dependent questions to help students access complex texts in their content areas; implementing metacognitive strategies that assess whether or not a question is text-dependent; and analysing how text-dependent questions support tertiary and career readiness. The intended audience for this module is secondary content area teachers.
Participants will learn how the Tutorial Analysis Grade Reflection (TAG) can be used to support students in the AVID Elective to identify their academic needs. Teachers will consider how the tutorial process fosters growth in the academic expectations for Australian students. Other Elective resources such as Weeks at a Glance, will be referenced to illustrate how the tutorial process can be modified to measure the success of AVID at your site. The intended audience for this module is AVID Elective Teachers and instructional coaches.
The purpose of this module is to encourage participants to support students become efficient and effective in their online searching. In this module, participants will become familiar with the organisation of a search page as well as strategies for “reading” search results, followed by strategies for identifying precise keywords for their online searches.
This module is intended to strengthen inquiry in all classrooms—K-12—through the use of Costa’s Levels of Thinking. The module will allow participants a chance to learn how AVID strategies can be implemented in all classrooms to increase inquiry. While the focus of this module is on increasing inquiry, each element of WICOR is not an isolated component. Each of the WICOR elements is integral to effective teaching and learning, and elements of WICOR are most effective when used together in learning activities.
This module is designed to support teachers and leaders to tell their story of schoolwide improvement through AVID’s use of data, and how their data shows alignment with regional/state and departmental data sets. Aligning quantitative data with qualitative narrative examples of student success creates passionate and sincere stories that makes data meaningful for students, staff, administrators and parents. Participants will be able to identify the purpose and use of data, collaborate with colleagues, and pinpoint action steps to craft their AVID stories of schoolwide improvement. The intended audience for this module is primary and secondary teachers, Site Team members, and leadership.
Participants will engage with AVID’s 4A’s Digital Learning Framework to explore how teachers Adopt, Adapt, Accelerate, and Advocate as they integrate digital tools with WICOR instructional practices. They will participate in a well-known AVID activity that has been adapted with a digital component. Participants will learn how to incorporate technology into their lesson plans with an emphasis on differentiating instruction and increasing student ownership of their learning. This module is for participants who have regular in-class access to technology. Participants must bring a laptop (preferred) or tablet, power cord, and earbuds/headphones with them. Please ensure device software and web browsers are up-to-date.
This module starts with analysing the “why” of your school’s mission and vision. We draw on Simon Sinek’s (2017) work on organisational culture and leadership to inspire a commitment to action that unites the whole school community. The audience for this module is primary and secondary site team members, and leadership.
Participants will understand how WICOR impacts all students, make connections with AVID Essentials, develop a plan for WICOR-ised lessons and an action plan to use WICOR to promote more rigorous teaching. Participants will also learn how to create an environment that is indicative of a university readiness system. The intended audience for this module is instructional faculty and content teachers, particularly AVID Site Team members.
AVID Australia is proud to announce that the WICOR Schoolwide (K-12) Professional Learning Module has been recognised as a NESA Accredited Professional Development course.
For teachers in New South Wales, this means that completing WICOR Schoolwide (K–12) will contribute 2 hours and 30 minutes of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Delivery and Assessment of NSW Curriculum/EYLF addressing standard descriptor 3.3.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.
This module is designed for participants to use collaborative strategies and identify how to align digital teaching and learning tools with WICOR strategies. Participants will examine the impact of integrating technology resources and tools to enable students to collaborate and communicate within and beyond traditional classroom walls. Participants will make connections to 21st century skills that students need to develop to prepare for success in post-secondary and workplace settings. Participants need a MyAVID account set-up prior to attending to access the digital resources being shared throughout this session. The intended audience for this module is primary and secondary teachers and leaders.