RECIPROCAL TEACHING: IN AN ESL CLASSROOM Melissa Dye EDBE /11/2014

Purpose of the lesson  The purpose of this lesson is to utilize the cooperative learning method of reciprocal teaching in an ESL classroom to improve reading comprehension.  For this lesson, I wanted to take my critical review research one step further an practice one of the cooperative learning strategies that I researched. Reciprocal teaching is a cooperative learning strategy that is proven to be successful in ESL classroom when working on reading comprehension.

Reciprocal Teaching Reciprocal teaching focuses on teaching students four strategies to strengthen their comprehension abilities. The strategies are:  Prediction  Summarization  Questioning  Clarification Reciprocal teaching focuses on the theory that cognitive development first occurs when students learn through social interactions. Once students have mastered the skills through discussion and socialization they are then able to internalize these skills and make them their own (Klinger & Vaughn, 1996).

Topic of the lesson: Increasing Reading comprehension in an 2 nd grade ESL classroom through reciprocal teaching of folktales

Content objectives Students will:  Demonstrate understanding and knowledge of folktale elements through class discussion  Analyze two American folktales and compare and contrast these two stories  Be able to use the four strategies of reciprocal teaching: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing

Language Objectives  Oral: Students will participate in reciprocal teaching discussion about the text of the two folktales read.  Reading: Students will use skills such as comparing and contrasting to demonstrate comprehension of the story.  Writing: Students will use writing skills when working in graphic organizer during comparing and contrasting.

TEKS The students will:  English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 2, Beginning with School Year  (b) Knowledge and skills.  (3) Reading/Beginning Reading/Strategies. Students comprehend a variety of texts drawing on useful strategies as needed. Students are expected to:  (A) use ideas (e.g., illustrations, titles, topic sentences, key words, and foreshadowing) to make and confirm predictions;  (B) ask relevant questions, seek clarification, and locate facts and details about stories and other texts and support answers with evidence from text; and  (C) establish purpose for reading selected texts and monitor comprehension, making corrections and adjustments when that understanding breaks down (e.g., identifying clues, using background knowledge, generating questions, re-reading a portion aloud).

TEKS Continued The students will:  (6) Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Theme and Genre. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Students are expected to:  (A) identify moral lessons as themes in well-known fables, legends, myths, or stories; and  (B) compare different versions of the same story in traditional and contemporary folktales with respect to their characters, settings, and plot.

ELPS The students will:  (3) Use classroom instruction that effectively integrates second language acquisition with quality content area instruction ensures that ELLs acquire social and academic language proficiency in English, learn the knowledge and skills in the TEKS and reach their full academic potential.  (1)(A) use prior knowledge and experiences to understand meanings in English;  (3)(c) speak using a variety of grammatical structures, sentences lengths, sentence types, and connecting words with increasing accuracy and ease as more English is required.

Materials  Book: The Ginger Bread Man  Book: The Runaway Tortilla  Large Venn diagram for entire class to use  Individual Venn diagram worksheets for class Gingerbread Man Runaway Tortilla Things in common

Procedure The teacher will:  Discuss the elements of a folktale with the class.  Folktales are often about a hero  Some are real and some are make-believe  Details in the story are usually exaggerated  Folktales attempt to solve problems  Review with class the 4 strategies of reciprocal teaching (predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing). Use hand signals to remind student’s strategies before we begin reading.  Discuss what the class knows about the story of the Ginger Bread Man, building on prior knowledge.

Procedure Continued The teacher will:  Read the story of the Ginger Bread man to the class. Use reciprocal teaching strategies while reading and allow class to have a discussion.  Show the class the story of the Runaway Tortilla. Have the class make predictions about what may happen in the story.  Read the story the Runaway Tortilla by Eric A. Kimmel with the class. Use reciprocal teaching strategies while reading and allow the class to discuss the book as we read.  Discuss with the class some similarities and differences between the two stories. Write these suggestions on a huge Venn diagram.  Have students work in pairs to discuss more differences and similarities between the Ginger Bread Man and the Runaway Tortilla. Each student will be expected to fill out their Venn diagram for the two stories.

Procedure Continued The students will:  Participate in reciprocal teaching discussion as a class  Use turn and talks to talk about what they are learning with a partner  Reread over the two stories with their partner  Discuss the two stories as they read and work to fill in individual Venn diagram

Assessment  Informal assessment will be taken during the discussion process  Teacher will assess students during class discussion and while working together to see if they are using all of the hand gestures taught. These gestures will be an informal assessment to insure that all four strategies are being practiced.  Formal assessment will be taken based on answers on the Venn diagram

Closing Thoughts Through this lesson, students will be provided with the skills needed to predict, clarify, question, and summarize what they are reading. They will work as a class to practice their reciprocal teaching strategies and then work in pairs to finish the lesson. Students will also be expected to compare and contrast material from these two stories. Overall the goal will be to have students work together to gain further understanding of the text provided to them.

Reference Klinger, K., & Vaughn, S. (1996). Reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension strategies for students with learning disabilities who use English as a second language. The Elementary School Journal