Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources

What is it? How does it work?

Background:
Project CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies) helps secondary teachers engage students in effective behaviors for reading text across the content areas. A local facilitator provides ongoing support. It was developed in 1979 by Dr. Carol Santa and teachers in the Kalispell School District, Kalispell, MT.

Overview:
Project CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies) was first developed in 1979 by Dr. Carol Santa and teachers in the Kalispell School District, Kalispell, MT. It was validated for inclusion in the National Diffusion Network. The program provides teachers with strategies to help secondary students read text across the content areas. These strategies engage students in the following effective reading behaviors:

Background Knowledge
Students learn to engage prior knowledge. Teachers learn to design instruction to help students use their knowledge to guide their own comprehension.
Elicit Active Reading, Listening, and Learning
Teachers are helped to engage students through reading and responding instead of lecturing and questioning. They learn to use strategies to elicit active reading.
Promote Discussion and Instructional Conversations Through student-centered discussion, strategies and meanings generated from reading are discussed and evaluated.
Encourage Metacognition
Students learn to fit their learning with background knowledge, to set learning goals, to choose and monitor strategies to fit those goals, and apply fix-up strategies.
Integrate Writing
Through strategies such as response entries, journals and logs, students consistently write to extend their understanding.
Understand Text Structure
Students learn to recognize and use text structure supports and to outline or map the text through selective underlining, power notes, and mapping.
Organize Information
Students learn to organize both narrative and expository text using guides, frames, and patterns.
Build Understanding
Students build understanding of vocabulary through mapping and writing strategies.

Although designed for high schools, Project CRISS has been adapted for middle schools and for inclusion settings. It has been implemented successfully with gifted, college-bound, and ESL students. It is also supports literature-based reading programs.