The infrequent use of reciprocal teaching in today's classrooms is a great example of the knowing-doing gap. This gap is illustrated by this common example: Most of us know getting more exercise and eating healthier is the way to lose weight, but substantially fewer of us actually do hit the gym regularly or eat a more plant-based diet. Similarly, most literacy educators know what reciprocal teaching (RT) is, but this powerful strategy is implemented far less often than it should be.
Reciprocal teaching is a reading-comprehension protocol designed by Palincsar and Brown to assist students in understanding complex texts. It's straightforward enough: Four students read and discuss a text, using dialogic strategies that mirror the internal ones used by expert readers. The text is segmented into 3–5 short passages so that students can periodically pause to discuss what they know thus far and what they find confusing. Students are assigned one of four specific roles (which fade out as students become more adept at text discussion) corresponding to four comprehension strategies:
- A summarizer, who helps the group identify key points of the passage.
- A clarifier, who invites questions about confusing vocabulary or concepts.
- A questioner, who poses questions to confirm understanding.
- A predictor, who encourages speculation about information the next passage might reveal.
Simple—and Simply Effective
Why should reciprocal teaching be a foundational protocol in elementary and secondary classrooms? For one, its effect size on reading achievement across 38 studies is strong, at 0.75 according to John Hattie's research. For another, RT is highly flexible and widely applicable. It's effective across a wide range of reading abilities, including for students with learning disabilities, adolescents with moderate intellectual disabilities, students identified as gifted, and those reading above grade level. RT has been used successfully with students as young as 6, in online environments, and with adults learning classical literature, to name just a few applications.
And have we mentioned that RT is a no-cost instructional strategy? There's no expensive curriculum involved, no prolonged professional development for teachers, and no required special equipment. As the teacher, you choose the text, make decisions about where it should be segmented (usually every few paragraphs or every few pages), and create a template to collect students' notes.
So why don't more classrooms use reciprocal teaching as a foundational reading routine? Perhaps the resistance is due to concerns about the time and attention required to prepare students for RT. The power of reciprocal teaching lies in students' co-construction of knowledge as they work collaboratively to make sense of a challenging piece of text. But this requires that students learn how to do so, first relying on protocols, and then developing the capacity to listen to one another.
Preparing Kids for RT
It takes approximately 20 lessons for RT to fully transition into a student-led dialogic process. During the introductory phase, the teacher takes the lead, primarily by systematically modeling each element of the process. There isn't any one right place to begin—pick the comprehension strategy (summarizing, clarifying, questioning, or predicting) that makes sense for your students. You might begin with a lesson focused on summarizing, for instance, by first modeling and thinking aloud about how you'd summarize a text, and then inviting students to summarize short passages with you. Have students practice the same summarizing strategy a few times in small groups, using a variety of texts.
This process is repeated with a second comprehension strategy—let's say, questioning. Once again, the teacher models the strategy—showing how to pose questions to check readers' understanding—thinks aloud about how to use this strategy, and lets students try it out themselves. After students have practiced the questioning technique individually a few times, they're ready to integrate previous learning with new knowledge. Student groups should do a few rounds in which they both summarize and pose questions connected to a text—so that students don't erroneously believe that comprehension requires only a single approach. The third and fourth strategies can be similarly introduced, practiced, and woven together.
In the video accompanying this column, Melissa Noble, a teacher at Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego, has her students use a reciprocal teaching protocol with an article about an ocean cleanup project. Her 5th graders have been learning RT for weeks and are beginning to take on more responsibility as they implement it in small groups. Noble provides guidance and collects formative assessment information about her students' growing capacity to read and discuss text collaboratively (as she monitors their content learning). Her lesson is a good demonstration of how RT can boost students' engagement with a text.
Offering Supports
Many teachers provide their students with language frames to scaffold discussion of the text during reciprocal teaching. For instance, a good sentence frame for summarizing is "The most important thing I read was …," and one for clarifying might be "It didn't make sense until I …". (See suggested supports and prompts in Figure 1.)
Figure 1. Supports and Language Frames for Comprehension Strategies in Reciprocal Teaching
| PREDICTION We look and listen for clues that will tell us what may happen next or what we will learn from the text. Good predictions are based on … * what we already know * what we understand from the text * what pictures, charts, or graphs tell us I think … I predict … I bet … I wonder … | QUESTION We test ourselves about what we just read by asking ourselves questions. We see if we really understand and can identify what is important. We ask different kinds of questions: * Factual questions: Who, what, when, where? * Interpretive questions: How, why? * Reflective questions: I wonder if … I'm curious about … |
| CLARIFY We clear up confusion and find the meaning of unfamiliar words, sentences, ideas, or concepts. This is confusing to me … I need to reread, slow down, look at the graphs or illustrations, or break the word apart. When I began reading this, I thought … Then, when I read this part, I realized … It didn't make sense until I … | SUMMARIZE We restate the main ideas, events, or points. A good summary includes … * key people, items, or places * key words and synonyms * key ideas and concepts The main point is … If I put the ideas together, I now understand that … The most important thing I read was … |
Language frames guide the discussion so that the students fully examine the information they've read together across these dimensions. They also equip student writers with the academic language and organizational structures to write about what they have read. In fact, one underappreciated outcome of RT is the positive effect it has on writing.
Get Started!
It's time to revisit reciprocal teaching and make it a foundational reading routine in classrooms. When whole grade levels or departments commit to teaching students RT, learning time is shortened because students practice these literacy skills across classes and content. So where will you begin?
