Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching places a student in the role of teacher within a small group. Teachers model the strategy to show students how to guide group discussions based on four strategies: summarization, generating questions, clarification, and prediction. After students learn these strategies, they take on the role of the teacher and lead their group in a discussion of the topic under study.

Implementation

1. Plan instruction that models the strategy including respectful interaction in small groups.

2. Groups should consist of three to six students.

1. Monitor the groups during the discussion to ensure that they are on task and that all students are involved.
2. Rotate the group leader constantly so that all students have opportunity to learn from a leadership experience. Self-awareness of ones comprehension strategies grows from explaining the steps to other students.
3. Check to see if students have learned to use this strategy in previous years and refresh their management of the strategy as needed.

Classroom Management

1. Assign four students to each group.
2. Each student in the group receives a unique role: Summarizer, Questioner, Clarifier, Predictor
3. Assign students to read a short section of text. They will take notes or mark the text as they read.
4. When students complete the reading, the SUMMARIZER will share the main ideas from the passage.
5. The QUESTIONER will then ask questions about the passage: What was not clear? What information is incompletely addressed in the passage? What connections can you make to the passage using other concepts or ideas previously studied?
6. The CLARIFIER will point out the confusing parts and will try to answer the questions that students asked in the previous step.
7. The PREDICTOR will make predictions about what the passage will reveal next or, if the passage is a story, the predictor might tell what the next events in the story may be.
8. The roles in the group then rotate to the right, and the next passage is read. Students repeat the process using their new roles.
9. This continues to the end of the passage.