Reciprocal Teaching

Who?

• Reciprocal teaching can be utilized in all grades.

• READ: Seventy Strategies to Support Reading Success suggested that this strategy be utilized in the 3rd-8th grade, but with scaffolding, this strategy could be used in grades as young as kindergarten.

• This strategy is utilized in one-on-one meetings, small groups, and whole group.

What?

• Reciprocal teaching is a comprehension strategy that helps students focus and monitor their reading in order to achieve higher levels of understanding.

• This strategy helps students develop skills in four important comprehension processes: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing.

Why?

• It is a scaffolded and interactive discussion strategy that is built on four processes that proficient readers use to make meaning from text.

  • Predicting helps students to anticipate and speculate about what will be discussed in the text.

  • Questioning requires students to generate and ask questions about the passage.

  • Clarifying helps students focus on what makes the selection difficult to understand.

  • Summarizing requires students to restate what they have read in their own words.

• Time to practice each of the processes is essential to help students understand the reciprocal teaching strategy. Once students understand each specific process, they are able to use them all collectively as they read.

When?

• This strategy should be used during reading.

How?

• Teacher models and explains each of the four processes and the role each plays in comprehension.

  • ​Predicting: Helps students to anticipate and speculate about what will be discussed in the text

    • ​"Paula the Predictor"

    • Holds a crystal ball with a fortune teller voice

    • Loves to make predictions about the future and what is going to happen in books

  • Questioning: Requires students to generate and ask questions about the passage

    • ​"Quinn the Questioner"

    • Holds microphone and talks like a cheesy game show host

    • Loves to ask questions about the text

  • Clarifying: Helps students focus on what makes the selection difficult to understand

    • ​"Clarence the Clarifier"

    • Wears glasses, holds a magnifying glass, and talks like a detective

    • Loves to clarify the meaning of text and illustrations

  • Summarizing: Requires students to restate what they have read in their own words.

    • ​"Sammy the summarizer"

    • Wears a cowboy hat, holds a lasso, and talks like a cowboy

    • Loves to summarize different pages/passages of the text

• The teacher reviews the four processes with the class and divides the students into groups of four. Students determine (or teacher chooses) who will fulfill each role. 

• Teacher distributes material to be read and points out the symbols that show where to stop and discuss the reading.

• Students read and stop at identified points to discuss material.

• GOAL--to have students remember the four processes so they can ultimately use the strategies independently