By Anita L. Green Central Carolina Community College Institute 2015 Reciprocal Teaching: A Reading Comprehension Strategy for my ASE Classroom By Anita L. Green Central Carolina Community College Institute 2015

Goals of Reciprocal Teaching To improve students’ reading comprehension using four strategies: Predicting Questioning Clarifying Summarizing

Goals of Reciprocal Teaching To scaffold the four strategies by modeling, guiding and applying strategies while reading To guide students to become reflective in their thinking To help students monitor their reading comprehension using these four strategies To strengthen instruction in a variety of settings: whole-class and guided reading To be part of a broader framework of comprehension strategies

Reciprocal Teaching (continued) To be part of a broader framework of comprehension strategies that include: Previewing Self-questioning Making connections Visualizing Monitoring Evaluating Knowing how words work

What Reciprocal Teaching Is.. “Reciprocal teaching is a powerful research-based teaching technique.” “Reciprocal teaching was designed to focus on just four important strategies that good readers use to comprehend text.” Oczkus, Lori D. (2003). Reciprocal Teaching at Work: Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension. Delaware: International Reading Associations

What Reciprocal Teaching is not…. “Reciprocal Teaching is not a pencil-and-paper activity. It was designed as a discussion technique in which think-alouds play an integral part.” Reciprocal teaching is “not comprehensive enough to stand alone as a method for teaching reading comprehension.”

Ways to Use Reciprocal Teaching Teach the reciprocal teaching strategies to whole groups using fictional and informational texts. Give struggling readers an extra dose of reading comprehension instruction using reciprocal teaching in small intervention groups. Have students take on the roles of predictor, questioner, clarifier and summarizer in literature circles.

Reciprocal Teaching Strategies “The Fabulous Four”

Madam, the Powerful Predictor Previewing the text to anticipate what might happen next Assists students in setting a purpose for reading and in monitoring their comprehension

Predicting The predictor helps the group to identify the organizational structure of the text and to connect sections of the text to one another and to the overall text structure. The predictor could use the following prompts to help the group. Which type(s) of text structure did this most closely match? What evidence lead you to identify that text structure? Based on the type(s) identified, what did you predict that you would read about next? What do you think we will read about next? Text types can usually be classified in the following ways: Descriptive Chronological Cause and effect Analytical Persuasive Compare and contrast

Text types can usually be classified in the following ways: Descriptive Chronological Cause and effect Analytical Persuasive Compare and contrast

Predicting I think….. I’ll bet…. I wonder if…. I imagine…. I suppose…. I predict….

Questioning The questioner helps group members ask and answer all types of questions about the text. As the questioner, you might ask the group: What questions did you have as you read? Can anyone else help answer that question? What kind of question was that? What did we do to find answers? Are there any other questions you wonder about?  

Quincy, the Quizzical Questioner Good readers ask questions throughout the reading process Students learn to generate questions about a text’s main idea, important details and textual inferences

Language of questioning: Who? What? Where? When ? Why? How? What if?

Clara, the Careful Clarifier Clarifying helps students monitor their own comprehension as they identify problems that they are having comprehending parts of the text. Teacher and the student share “fix-up” strategies to construct meaning.

Clarifying The clarifier assists in identifying words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and sections of the text that may be unclear and asks members for ways in clearing up these problems. In the initial stages of implementation the clarifier may use the following prompts to help the group clear up difficulties. What is still not clear to you? Lets reread what is still unclear and try rereading the section right before what was unclear. Lets chunk the text into smaller segments. For example, break complex sentences into component clauses or phrases.

. Lets visualize what is described in the text. If there are diagrams or pictures depicting the difficult material look at them carefully and read the captions that accompany the graphics. Also try mental visualizing using these phrases as aids, I picture …, I can see … Lets connect what we have read to things we already know from other science experiences. For instance, this is like …, this reminds me of … Lets get outside help. For instance, if it’s a word we don’t understand lets try the glossary in the text, a dictionary, or an encyclopedia.

Language of clarifying: I didn’t understand the part where… This {sentence, paragraph, page, chapter} is not clear. I can’t figure out… This is a tricky word because…

Clarifying Strategies To clarify an idea: To clarify a word: Reread the parts that they didn’t understand. Read on to look for clues. Ideas about what they know. Talk to a friend. Reread. Look for word parts they know. Find another word that looks like this word. Read on to find clues. Try another word that makes sense.

Summarizing The summarizer helps group members restate the main ideas in the reading. Reminder - Summaries are formed by the reader and are not found in the text. They do not include the details. Summarizing helps us understand and remember what we have read.   As the summarizer you might ask the group: What are the main ideas in this chunk of text? Can you use your own words to state the main idea in one sentence? Which parts could you leave out and still get the point across? How can we combine our ideas into one summary?

Sammy, the Super Summarizer To summarize effectively, students must recall and arrange in order only the important events in the text. Summary organization is based on the type of text: narrative or expository.

The language of summarizing: The most important ideas in this text are… This part was about… The book was about… First… Next… Then… Finally… The story takes place… The main characters are… A problem occurs when…

Remembering?