Four Essential Skills for Academic Success

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• Four Essential Skills for Academic Success

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Want to Take a Guess
According the ACR (AVID College Readiness), there
are four essential skills students need for
success. Discuss with the students sitting at
your table what you think these might be. As a
table, come up with at least two that you think
may be on this list. Be prepared to share.
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Essential Skill 1

• Analyzing the prompt or academic task.
• Students need the ability to analyze their notes
  in order to better ask the professor more
  appropriate questions as to what is expected of
  given assignments or readings.

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Essential Skill 2

• Selective and purpose-driven reading, especially
  for expository (non-fiction) texts.
• Students need the ability to correctly approach
  an assigned reading and initiate the appropriate
  reading strategies.

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Essential Skill 3

• Focused note-taking, designed around a prompt or
  academic task.
• Students need the ability to refine their
  note-taking skills to allow them to come up with
  useful, relevant and detailed questions on their
  Cornell notes.

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Essential Skill 4

• Integrating sources into texts, using direct
  quotes, paraphrase, summary, or synthesis.
• Students need the ability to synthesize
  information and correctly incorporate it into
  their writings. This is probably one of the most
  challenging essentials for students.

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A Writing Process

• What is the writing process that you are taught
  in your English classes?
• There are actually many academic writing
  processes that may differ in the way they
• Begin with a prompt
• Rely on sources
• Integrate resources

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Creating a Research Log

• For the next few weeks we will be building a
  writing process that will help you to better
  apply research and organize all of your
  resources. In order to better help you do that,
  you will need to add a Research Log tab in the
  AVID section of your binder.

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Research Log Contents

• In-Class Notes
• Research Notes
• Works Cited
• Quickwrites and journaling
• Relevant Vocabulary List

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Homework

• Designate an area in your binder for your
  Research Log, which can be sub-divided as noted
  in the power point. Be prepared to show it on
  Wednesday.