CRP:  A Cognitive Strategy for Literacy Instruction

Critical Response Protocol is a thinking routine for responding to visual art.  As a process of visual interpretation, it is similar to Visual Thinking Strategies, with roots in art criticism approaches advocated in Discipline Based Arts Education. 

Abigail Housen's (2002) research found that VTS offers a way to mediate meaning, incorporating both formal and experiential interpretation, which can be transferred from art to non-art objects.  In other words, students can use the thinking routine to read word-based and other kinds of text as well.

Inspired by VTS, interpretive approaches coming out of Project Zero and the work of dancer Liz Lerman, CRP was developed by a collaborative of classroom teachers from Minneapolis and the Perpich Center for Arts Education and area museums.  The Weisman Art Museum collaborated with teachers to publish Artful Writing, a curriculum incorporating CPR in visual art infused literacy lessons.

Critical Response Protocol in Action

      Critical Response Protocol

     1.  What do you notice?

     2.  How does it make you feel?

     3.  What does it remind you of?

     4.  What questions do you have?

     5.  Speculate.  Answer these questions.

Alston, a North High School student, works with his teacher, Melissa Borgman, to make meaning out of "Untitled" by Douglas Argue.

CRP in My Classroom

As an alternative high school language arts teacher, I've been using CRP in multiple forms in my classroom for 3 years.  Read about some applications in the fall 2007 issue of the Minnesota English Journal (  13Budenski.pdf).  The article chronicles three CRP based projects I incorporated in 2005-2006:  1) interpret poetry by creating digital visual metaphors, 2) extend literary themes by painting visual metaphors, and 3) analyze a literary text by pairing it with a piece of visual art.

CRP can also be used to:

•  
• activate prior knowledge before reading content text
• structure student discussion of readings
• partner visual text with word based text
• transfer reading skills across modes

 Other Procedures

Contributed by Caitlin B.: I really like this stratgey for ELLs.  Both starting from a visual literacy (concept from David O'brien), and having a protocol to follow gives students more guidance and structure until they feel prepared to be independent.  I can use this in a team-teaching setting where I am providing reading support with a content area teacher or I can use this in my own Language Arts classroom. 

for ELL students--start with students examining a piece of American Revolutionary art.  Have students follow the protocol to get at meaning in groups.  Ask them to present their findings.

--Move from there to an expository text and have them follow the protocol again.  This reinforces the strategy and gives them routines to accessing information.

--use the strategy repeatedly in teh class until students can follow the protocol on their own as a strategy.