Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching It facilitates the construction of deeper meaning to text through a modeling process that emphasizes reader control of questioning, clarifying, summarizing and predicting. It is a group effort between teacher and students that leads students to greater independence as critical readers as they share their unique understandings of parts of the text. Helping students learn how to attend to clues as they read to recognize patterns or commonalities is critical to successful prediction.

Reciprocal Teaching Levels 18/20+ Reading to Learn Model Focus on higher level comprehension strategies Focus on higher level decoding strategies Interactive model Works well with both fiction and nonfiction

Four comprehension strategies Predicting: helps students hypothesize what will occur in text. The students activate prior knowledge. A purpose for reading is developed Clarifying: students learn to monitor their comprehension by thinking about what they are reading and applying decoding strategies, as well as strategies for clarifying confusing or unknown concepts when something does not make sense. Questioning: students are responsible for formulating questions to ask the group based on text information (student generated). Summarizing: helps students identify the most important information in the text.

Suggestions for Implementation Teach the four reciprocal strategies to your entire class. Use the four reciprocal strategies throughout the day, especially during content lessons. Consistently model how to do the four strategies. Post a strategy chart where you meet for small group instruction. Provide individual strategy cards for students to use in the small group. Use the CMT/CAPT skills chart to develop a focus of instruction. Extend lessons with the use of graphic organizers to increase reading comprehension. Extend graphic organizers with summary writing to increase reading comprehension. Provide students with many opportunities for directed silent reading.