Students attend Basic Skills classes based on the following criteria:

• formal assessments (standardized tests)
• informal assessments (teacher-made tests, observations, etc.)
• previous classroom teacher recommendations
• current classroom teacher recommendations
• previous year's Basic Skills teacher recommendations, if applicable
• current year's Basic Skills teacher recommendations

In Basic Skills Language Arts, the following skills are addressed:

• oral reading fluency and expression
• literal comprehension (understanding and retelling details)
• inferential comprehension (making predictions, making judgments, drawing conclusions, identifying main idea)
• vocabulary comprehension (defining words through context, building word lists: synonyms, antonyms, and homophones)
• oral language expression
• written language expression
• paragraph development
• story development
• summarizing
• written language mechanics
• syllabication
• phonics (grade 3)
• spelling