Ch. 8, p. 266
Introducing Reciprocal Teaching
In introducing reciprocal teaching to students, you might begin as follows: “For the coming weeks we will be working together to improve your ability to understand what you read. Sometimes we are so busy figuring out what the words are that we fail to pay much attention to what the words and sentences mean. We will be learning a way to pay more attention to what we are reading. I will teach you to do the following activities as you read:
- To think of important questions that might be asked about what is being read and to be sure that you can answer those questions.
- To summarize the most important information that you have read.
- To predict what the author might discuss next in the passage.
- To point out when something is unclear in the passage or doesn’t make sense and then to see if we can make sense of it.
“These activities will help you keep your attention on what you are reading and make sure that you are understanding it.
“The way in which you will learn these four activities is by taking turns in the role of teacher during our reading group sessions. When I am the teacher, I will show you how I read carefully by telling you the questions I made up while reading, by summarizing the most important information I read, and by predicting what I think the author might discuss next. I will also tell you if I found anything I read to be unclear or confusing and how I made sense out of it.
“When you are the teacher, you will first ask the rest of us the questions you made up while reading. You will tell us if our answers are correct. You will summarize the most important information you learned while reading. You will also tell us if you found anything in the passage to be confusing. Several times throughout the story you will also be asked to predict what you think might be discussed next in the passage. When you are the teacher, the rest of us will answer your questions and comment on your summary.
“These are activities that we hope you will learn and use, not only when you are here in reading class, but whenever you want to understand and remember what you are reading—for example, in social studies, science, or history.”
Daily Procedures
- Pass out the passage for the day.
- Explain that you will be the teacher for the first segment.
- Instruct the students to read silently whatever portion of the passage you determine is appropriate. At the beginning, it will probably be easiest to work paragraph by paragraph.
- When everyone has completed the first segment, model the following:
- “The question that I thought a teacher might ask is...”
- Have the students answer your question. They may refer to the text if necessary. “I would summarize the important information in this paragraph in the following way...”
- “From the title of the passage, I would predict that the author will discuss...”
- If appropriate, “When I read this part, I found the following to be unclear...”
- Invite the students to make comments regarding your teaching and the passage. For example:
- “Was there more important information?”
- “Does anyone have more to add to my prediction?”
- “Did anyone find something else confusing?”
- Assign the next segment to be read silently. Choose a student to act as teacher for this segment. Begin with students who are more verbal and who you think will have less difficulty with the activities.
- Coach the student teacher through the activities as necessary. Encourage the other students to participate in the dialogue, but always give the student teacher for that segment the opportunity to go first and lead the dialogue. Be sure to give the student teacher plenty of feedback and praise for his or her participation.
- As the training days go by, try to remove yourself more and more from the dialogue so that the student teacher initiates the activities herself or himself with students providing feedback. Your role will continue to be monitoring, keeping students on track, and helping them over obstacles. Throughout the training, however, continue to take your turn as teacher, modeling at least once a session.
