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