Reciprocal Teaching
An Overview
The reciprocal teaching method uses multiple teaching strategies at once to foster comprehension.
The reciprocal teaching method uses multiple teaching strategies at once to foster comprehension.
- The reciprocal teaching strategy uses four strategies (predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing) in which students essentially become the teachers while reading a text. It is important for the teacher to model these strategies for student success.
- The following gives a basic overview of the four strategies:
- Predict: making an educated guess based on prior knowledge and signals in the text such as headings, charts, and pictures.
- Clarify: making words, statements, or ideas easier to understanding (can restate in a different way or summarize).
- Question: asking for information to test knowledge by either asking questions directly found in the text or asking questions that can be inferred from the text and prior learning.
- Summarize: a way of expressing the main ideas and details of a text. Written and oral summaries are two strategies found on this website.
Reciprocal Teaching Example With Organizer
Use a reciprocal teaching as an independent activity guided by an organizer.
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Predetermined Student Roles Example
Use reciprocal teaching in groups in which each student can focus on one strategy at a time.
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The above video shows a teacher guiding the reciprocal teaching strategy. Each step is explained and it is a great example in which students are actively involved.
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The two videos above show how a teacher engages the students in summarizing the part of the reciprocal teaching process. Then students get into reading groups, using reciprocal teaching. The video also shows the students discussing each part of reciprocal teaching by guidance of a student leader.
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Writing Component
- One of the middle school writing standards for common core states: "Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content."
- The reciprocal teaching strategy uses a variety of different comprehension strategies, so many standards can be used for this strategy. The standard above is an example of how reciprocal teaching follows standards. Through predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing, students are better able to convey the information of the text, leading into greater comprehension.