Mr. Gaspar's 6th Grade Seminar
Focus of Seminar/AVID for 6th Grade: With Seminar, students will benefit from a variety of concepts including learning organizational and study skills, working on critical thinking and asking probing questions, receiving academic help from peers and college tutors, and participating in enrichment and motivational activities that make college and career-readiness goals seem attainable.
August 2023- Start of School Year
To begin our 2023-2024 school year in our Seminar Class, we will become familiar with AVID and WICOR strategies, through various fun and challenging activities, along with learning moments involving character development, team-building, and leadership goals.
Curriculum: The curriculum, based on rigorous standards, was developed by middle and high school teachers in collaboration with college professors. It is based on best teaching practices in writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading (WICOR), and it is supported by state and national content standards. Seminar curriculum is used cross-curriculum at San Gorgonio (in content-area classes) to guide teachers and students, while planning strategies for success, by focusing on time management and study skills for students.
Our main, starting focus for the school year will be to introduce and emphasize AVID strategies and enriched activities throughout our year, which improve students' individual confidence along with learning values related to team-building concepts and values. We will also have consistent, class time each month to focus on integrating/blending a Math emphasis while learning about real-world, relevant experiences, example- learning about budgeting and utilizing math skills to better understand the value of budgeting.
August 2023- Start of School Year
To begin our 2023-2024 school year in our Seminar Class, we will become familiar with AVID and WICOR strategies, through various fun and challenging activities, along with learning moments involving character development, team-building, and leadership goals.
Curriculum: The curriculum, based on rigorous standards, was developed by middle and high school teachers in collaboration with college professors. It is based on best teaching practices in writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading (WICOR), and it is supported by state and national content standards. Seminar curriculum is used cross-curriculum at San Gorgonio (in content-area classes) to guide teachers and students, while planning strategies for success, by focusing on time management and study skills for students.
Our main, starting focus for the school year will be to introduce and emphasize AVID strategies and enriched activities throughout our year, which improve students' individual confidence along with learning values related to team-building concepts and values. We will also have consistent, class time each month to focus on integrating/blending a Math emphasis while learning about real-world, relevant experiences, example- learning about budgeting and utilizing math skills to better understand the value of budgeting.
Impact/Benefit of Seminar for students: The goals a long-lasting, positive impact with students and transforms the leadership, systems, instruction, and culture of a school, strengthening a college and career-readiness mentality for all students. AVID impacts students throughout the school when trained teachers use Seminar/AVID strategies to influence the academic and behavioral skills of their students.
In addition to using the Seminar/AVID strategies to help my students across other content areas in 6th grade, I also incorporate many aspects of character education and development, on a weekly basis within my Seminar class. Numerous web-based, technology resources are used on a daily basis (along with our classroom set of Chromebooks) with WICOR teaching practices to support academic rigor in a quality learning environment, which ultimately improves student academic progress.
Some valuable strategies that help students improve their study skills and become critical thinkers (cross-curricular as well as within AVID) include but are not limited to: Focused Note-taking; Marking-the-Text; Journal-Writing & Discussion; teaching important life-skills and relevant strategies; Philosophical Chairs; Socratic Seminar; Collaborative Study Groups' practices will also be utilized within our Seminar class times, to help strengthen our students' math knowledge and confidence.. These are all important strategies and approaches that I utilize on regular basis to help students develop & strengthen these valuable tools.
My students will be involved in a Seminar class environment that is both challenging and rewarding, where they are able to better understand how strategies learned will benefit each of them from an academic and personal growth standpoint.