Although the Reciprocal teaching framework was introduced during the 1980's in New Zealand, Australia and the USA as a successful and research-proven technique for teaching multiple comprehension strategies, it has only been advocated by the National Panel in the USA since 2000 and much more recently recommended by the UK Revised Primary National Strategy (2006), as effective teaching practice that improves student's reading comprehension and cooperative and collaborative learning.
What is reciprocal teaching?
Recommended reading:
Reciprocal Teaching at Work by Lori D. Oczkus, 2006 (1)
Scholastic Literacy Skills- Comprehension Series Yrs 1 - 6 by Donna Thomson & Elspeth Graham, 2009
Nelson Comprehension and Assessment for Learning Series Yrs 1 - 6 by Wendy Wren, Sarah Lindsey, Donna Thomson, Doug Dickinson and Series Editor John Jackman, Nelson Thornes, 2009
'Reciprocal teaching is a scaffold discussion technique that is built on four strategies that good readers use to comprehend text: predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarizing'. (Palincsar & Brown, 1984).
Once the teacher has successfully modelled (guided) the reciprocal process for the class, it is a process that offers a reading, interpreting and questioning framework, independent of the teacher, that involves each student in turn as teacher and learner within small mixed-ability groups. Its’ appeal is that it engages them in collaborative exploration of a variety of texts at different levels; providing them with the scaffolding for interactive predicting, questioning, summarizing and clarifying to support their understanding of text and how the author’s intention makes links with their own experiences and thinking.
However, Think2Read agree wholeheartedly with Oczkus when she emphasizes in her book that ‘Even though reciprocal teaching is a powerful research-based teaching technique, it is not comprehensive enough to stand alone as a method for teaching reading comprehension.’ As we discovered in the early days of the T2R Project journey with our Year Six children who attempted this method to build good reading comprehension; reading is such a complex process that it requires a range of skills that students need to be shown how to use first, before they can fully and meaningfully engage in the reciprocal teaching process.
Oczkus (2006) cites MacLaughlin and Allen’s (2002) example of the broad framework of eight strategies that they feel is essential for teaching students to understand what they are reading:
1. Pre-viewing – activiating prior knowledge, predicting and setting a purpose.
2. Self-questioning - generating questions to guide reading.
3. Making connections – relating reading to self, text and world.
4. Visualising – creating mental pictures.
5. Knowing how words work – understanding words through strategic vocabulary development, including the use of graphophonic, syntactic and semantic cueing systems.
6. Monitoring - asking whether text makes sense and clarifying by adapting strategic processes.
7. Summarising – synthesizing important ideas.’
8. Evaluating – making judgements.’
Click Here For Further Information On The Reciprocal Guided Reading Framework »»
(1) International Reading Association, 800 Barksdale Road, P.O. Box 8139, Newark, DE 19714-8139 USA
