Small group instructional reading (SGIR) strategies for Independent readers Reciprocal Teaching Palincsar and Brown (1986) Virginia Outred 2011

This strategy takes the form of a dialogue between the teacher and students as they use and develop the strategies of: predicting clarifying questioning summarising.

Reciprocal teaching helps readers learn to internalise the strategies which effective readers employ. When engaging in reciprocal teaching strategies, the students are practising and developing skills required to comprehend and learn.

The strategy is more suited to information texts It is useful to model the four processes for the whole class prior to commencing the strategy in a small group. It is important to find a suitable fiction or factual text at an instructional level for the small group of students participating. Depending on the group, read small chunks of text at a time (paragraph, page, sub heading) Can revisit the 4 steps several times in one session

Predicting When predicting the child is anticipating what will come next in the text, based on appropriate prior knowledge, and on the structure and content of the text. It sets the purpose and encourages learners to think ahead.

Clarifying When clarifying, students are dealing with difficulties in the text by being alert to unfamiliar vocabulary, text that is structured or set out in an unfamiliar way and new or difficult concepts.

Question generating When question generating, the students explore the meaning of the text in depth. It gives the student the opportunity to frame a question and seek possible solutions by finding relevant information to answer the question.

Summarising When summarising, the student is identifying and integrating important information presented in the text. The student needs to identify the most important content of the section and express it in a way that indicates understanding.

Explicit teaching (modelling) What to do as a reader when reading an information text. How to find out about new words and concepts. (dictionary, atlas, read ‘around’ the text) Types of Questions- Here, Hidden, Head How to summarise

Questions HERE on the page. Low level HIDDEN on the page. Inferential In my HEAD. Higher order thinking. Opinions, ideas.

Making connections to texts Text to self- does it remind me of something I already know about? Text to Text- does it remind me of another book, movie, webpage? Text to World- what is the author trying to say about a theme, idea, lesson to be learnt

Follow up? Write the summary Fact and opinion sheet Retell the information in another form- chart, diagram, webpage, interview. Write about text to self, text to text, text to world connections. ‘I wonder, I know’ chart. Independent reading to find out more.