Action Agendas has teamed up with SOAR® Study Skills to provide professional development for educators.

SOAR® Study Skills is a simple system of easy, student-friendly strategies that help students complete homework and study much more efficiently. As students become more efficient, they begin to learn more and their grades go up while their study time goes down!   Educators who learn the SOAR® System teach students a consistent -rather than confusing- process for organizing and studying efficiently:

• Teachers discover that significantly more homework is turned in on time, less time is wasted on lost assignments and supplies, and students score better on quizzes, tests, and writing assignments.
• Administrators are happy when students perform their best on standardized tests because students have not only learned how to take tests but have learned how to think more critically.

The SOAR® System covers skills and strategies that apply across the curriculum.  Topics covered include:

	Managing time		Setting goals
	Organizing papers		Organizing space
	Taking notes		Taking Tests
	Planning homework & projects		Communicating with parents & teachers
	Improving reading comprehension		Writing papers

These core strategies cover the most fundamental skills for school success and interrelate with one another, making it easy for students to learn and use them immediately. The techniques within each section lay a foundation for the following section and conversely, reinforce strategies from previous sections.

“Wonderful organizational ideas for students…prioritizing would be great to use with students.  The writing tools will also be a significant help!” - Nancy Anderson, high school resource teacher

 “Excellent, useable, information!” - Lori Bolton, middle school teacher

Not only will educators learn the SOAR® strategies, they will also learn:

• How to effectively teach the strategies to students and motivate them for success. Educators will learn why each strategy was selected for this program and how to maintain the integrity of keeping strategies simple. They will also learn how to emphasize the concept of finding a balance between school and fun, so students will be more receptive towards the program.
• Hands-on activities they can do to reinforce the concepts and strategies. As educators, we know it is always better to “show, not tell,” which is key to making SOAR® accessible for students. Teachers will learn how to prepare supplies and demonstrations for each component of the program.
• Common “complaints” and “excuses” they are likely to hear from students and how to respond to them. In every group, there is always a “naysayer” or two. After teaching the program for so many years, we have heard a lot of excuses from students. We will help you turn these negative comments around into something positive.
• Suggestions for pacing the instruction over time. 

On-site inservices or tele-classes are currently available for schools/educators who would like to use the program in their classrooms. Training for educators is available as a one day in-service at your school site or via tele-class for a total of six hours. In addition to the initial training, we will also schedule two fifty-minute sessions via tele-conference to check on the progress of the program in the classroom(s) and answer questions as educators begin to teach the program.

For more information about SOAR® Study Skills for educators, please vist the SOAR website.