Reciprocal Teaching (RT):
RT is an example of socially mediated instruction in which the teacher and students engage in dialogue for the purpose of constructing meaning from the text.
RT helps students summarize what has been read so far, clarify hard parts of the text, ask questions about the text, and predict what is going to come next.
Predicting:
Predicting provides a purpose for reading. Students hypothesize what the author might discuss next and then confirm or disprove that hypothesis. Predicting also facilitates the use of text structures by seeing the way headings and sub-headings and questions embedded in the text can be useful in anticipating what might occur next.
Summarizing:
Readers must identify the important points, paraphrase them; first across sentences, then paragraphs and ultimately across the passage as a whole. Most difficult strategy because it requires that several sub-tasks be completed:
1) considering what the main idea of the text is
2) eliminating unimportant details and searching for important points
3) thinking about what needs t be said about the important points, and saying it in your own words
4) self-questioning as to whether the summary makes sense.
In RT, students practice summarizing at the paragraph, and text segment level (no more than a few paragraphs).
Generating Questions:
Asking question about what was read helps students process the information they’ve read. When readers generate questions, they’re actually doing a self-test to ascertain that they can answer their own questions. We’ll be asking students to make up “teacher-like” questions (trivial vs. questions of substance).
Clarifying:
Students become aware that within the text itself, there are often stumbling blocks to comprehension. When clarifying, attention is focused on new vocabulary, unclear referent words and/or unfamiliar or difficult concepts. Understanding why each of these could be stumbling blocks to comprehension can help students restore meaning by using such comprehension strategies as re-reading, reading ahead or asking for help.
RT helps students summarize what has been read so far, clarify hard parts of the text, ask questions about the text, and predict what is going to come next.
Predicting:
Predicting provides a purpose for reading. Students hypothesize what the author might discuss next and then confirm or disprove that hypothesis. Predicting also facilitates the use of text structures by seeing the way headings and sub-headings and questions embedded in the text can be useful in anticipating what might occur next.
Summarizing:
Readers must identify the important points, paraphrase them; first across sentences, then paragraphs and ultimately across the passage as a whole. Most difficult strategy because it requires that several sub-tasks be completed:
1) considering what the main idea of the text is
2) eliminating unimportant details and searching for important points
3) thinking about what needs t be said about the important points, and saying it in your own words
4) self-questioning as to whether the summary makes sense.
In RT, students practice summarizing at the paragraph, and text segment level (no more than a few paragraphs).
Generating Questions:
Asking question about what was read helps students process the information they’ve read. When readers generate questions, they’re actually doing a self-test to ascertain that they can answer their own questions. We’ll be asking students to make up “teacher-like” questions (trivial vs. questions of substance).
Clarifying:
Students become aware that within the text itself, there are often stumbling blocks to comprehension. When clarifying, attention is focused on new vocabulary, unclear referent words and/or unfamiliar or difficult concepts. Understanding why each of these could be stumbling blocks to comprehension can help students restore meaning by using such comprehension strategies as re-reading, reading ahead or asking for help.