On Nov. 19, Lake Central teachers had the opportunity to attend Project CRISS Training in order to learn new teaching strategies to implement into their classroom. The training was conducted by Mr. Ken Miller,former Lake Central principle.

“Project CRISS is an instructional training program for teachers. It is offered in school districts throughout the country. In CRISS workshops, teachers are trained to help their students better learn their subject matter through reading, writing, talking and listening strategies,” Mr. Miller said.

Throughout the training, teachers learned new strategies to help students throughout their learning process. Project CRISS Training’s main goal is to ensure that students will become more self-directed, independent learners. Some of the strategies that were taught were the use of picture notes and popular studying websites, such as Quizlet.

“During the three-day CRISS training, teachers learn to effectively prepare lessons that include background knowledge, purpose setting, author’s craft, discussion, writing, visualizing, organizing and student reflection,” Miller said.

While at training, teachers were able to work with other teachers as they learned these new strategies. The training was interactive; one of the many activities was looking at a list of words and memorizing the list in a matter of seconds. After, they were told to write these words down. The purpose was to show how having words grouped into chunks can help a student memorize quickly and more efficiently. Participants in Project CRISS training stretched all the way from kindergarten levels to high school levels.

“All teachers in the Lake Central School Corporation have an opportunity to attend the training. Approximately 80% of the [Lake Central School Cooperation] teachers in grades K-12 have completed Project CRISS training,” Mr. Miller said.

All teachers that have not yet attended training are encouraged to do so. The next scheduled Project CRISS trainings will be conducted on Jan. 28 and 29, 2015.