Here’s a problem that teachers have to deal with all too often: Kids come to class not having read the assigned text, or chapter, or article. What to do to move forward?
The solution for some has been to do an end run around such assignments by having the students read the piece in class instead. That takes a lot of instructional time and leads to strategies like Round Robin Reading (RRR) and its cousins, Popcorn Reading and Combat Reading.
RRR is not a comprehension strategy; it’s a management tool. Kids keep quiet and listen because they might be called on next. Worrying that they might get called on next means they’re not paying attention to what is currently being read. If the teacher is obvious about who’ll read next, the students know when their turns are coming and are rehearsing while someone else is laboring away at her chunk of the text.
RRR is not a valid fluency strategy, either: With no chance to rehearse what they’re reading, poor oral readers won’t do well—and on top of that, they’re modeling poor reading for others. And, there’s the embarrassment factor. I can remember from my own schools days that some kids hated reading aloud because they anticipated stumbling, and the good readers hated it when the poor ones read for just that reason.
But after all these years, teachers still use RRR. It’s primarily a management strategy. Kids are quiet, occupied, and the assignment gets read.
So okay. You still have to lick the didn’t-read-the-assignment-before-class problem. What could you do instead?
How about trying this strategy: Reciprocal Teaching.
Like literature circles, Reciprocal Teaching (RT) depends on students assuming specific roles: Summarizer, Clarifier, Questioner, and Predictor. In their groups of four, students read the text—or chunk of text—in class and then discuss what they’ve read with each other. Each student has a reading purpose. The Summarizer knows he’ll have to recap what happened in the story or outline the main points if the piece is non-fiction. The Clarifier will keep an eye out for words or phrases that might be confusing. The Questioner asks like a teacher, probing the text not just with recall questions (especially if the students are secondary level) but with “What ifs?” and “I wonders…” and other idea extenders. The Predictors make an educated guess about what comes next—they’re like “the weatherman” one student told me.
Naturally, the teacher needs to be sure the students understand the demands of the four roles. With older students, that may only require a simple explanation. At any age, it may require modeling or even a dry run or two. As with any new skill, the students have to be trained or their conversations won’t be productive.
Reciprocal Teaching can be used with fiction, but it was originally designed for use with non-fiction: a chapter in a textbook, a newspaper article, an argumentative essay, a short informative piece. As they take turns leading the discussion, students practice summary skills, learn to think beyond the text, help each other discern meaning from context, and importantly, grapple with text structure. This last is a significant challenge. Kids know the story arc well by the time they reach middle school. Being the weatherman for a fictional piece isn’t hard because middle school students know how foreshadowing works, and they’ve had enough experience with stories to imagine plot turns and story endings that aren’t pat. But they’ve had less experience with the structures of non-fiction. Reciprocal Teaching gives them practice at discerning how a non-fiction piece is laid out—to learn about order of importance, problem/solution, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, chronological order, and other methods of organization–to predict what comes next in an informative or argumentative piece.
Website sources such as those listed at the end of this article spell out the details of structuring a Reciprocal Teaching lesson. Bookmarks with question stems and note-taking sheets are provided on many websites.
Recently I’ve seen Reciprocal Teaching in action. In fact, I modeled the strategy in a 6th grade classroom, which is where the “weatherman” quip originated. The students were quick to catch on and excited to implement the strategy. All the groups were reading the same book: Julie of the Wolves. The students loved talking through that day’s chapter with each other. Days later, after several rounds using the Reciprocal Teaching process as it has traditionally been practiced, the 6th graders suggested a new spin. Let the summarizers all talk together and choose the best summary, the clarifiers work through a variety of confusions to share with the class, the questioners ask questions of each other and then pose the best to the class, and the predictors to consider a variety of options and present their consensus to the class. Another variation you might try is having each group of four make up a quiz over the assigned section and exchange quizzes with another group. You, the teacher, are the final judge of the quality of the questions: Students get all the points you’ll assign if their questions are thoughtful and carefully written.
Or, each group can read a different piece. I also recently presented Reciprocal Teaching as a comprehension strategy and an alternative to RRR to a group of high school teachers. After the workshop, one 10th grade teacher selected articles from internet and newspaper sources that all related to the concept of ambition. Each piece explored the topic from a different perspective. His students read the articles in small groups and then reported the gist of each to the rest of the class. All this was in preparation for a unit on ambition with Macbeth as the anchor text. His students staked out corners in the classroom, spots in the hallway, and tables in the cafeteria to hold their discussions. I listened in and was reminded not of wooden Q-A sessions where the teacher decides what ideas to privilege and what details are important, but of adult book club conversations.
Another colleague, a high school health teacher, had been using RRR for years. Once he learned about the advantages of Reciprocal Teaching, he deliberately reorganized his classroom, moving the desks from conventional rows into clusters of fours. His students—who definitely hadn’t been reading their assignments—had taken to the strategy immediately. They’d developed independence as readers rather quickly. The teacher found that he was able to circulate among the clusters and keep an ear on their discussions—a much better management strategy, he found, than casting an eye on the students from the front.
One of my colleagues, a high school music teacher and band director, used Reciprocal Teaching as a strategy for students to review for the final exam. The students enjoyed the process and the conversations about the musical language he wanted them to understand and use on the final went beyond simply recalling definitions. Watch this video to see what Dan Peo did. Be warned: the process was noisy. https://drive.google.com/a/tsc.k12.in.us/file/d/0B1xPdu7aOTwqVlFHWmo1bHcyZTA/view?usp=sharing
Reciprocal Teaching is, at its heart, far more than a strategy to manage the classroom, but if that’s the starting place, that’s okay. Once teachers see how well Reciprocal Teaching works and how much students like the process of learning from each other, they choose RT. It’s an effective way to build comprehension skills and teach text structures. Instructional time is put to good use—and the assignments all get read.
This is the original research reported by Annemarie Palinscar and Ann L. Brown (1984) in Cognition and Instruction. The authors developed the strategy, Reciprocal Teaching, and in this paper describe its effectiveness in improving comprehension skills among seventh graders.
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/reciprocal_teaching
This explanation for elementary school teachers has clear directions and a video of a teacher modeling the process for a group of students. Downloadable bookmarks and a worksheet are provided.
http://www.readingquest.org/strat/rt.html
Another clear set of directions from a web site for social studies teachers. This site explains that the order in which the group members “present” is not fixed. The teacher should prescribe the order that makes sense.
In an American Classroom 
Reblogged this on In an American Classroom and commented:
In time for this week’s workshops on Reciprocal Teaching, here’s a post from two years ago that spells out the basic strategy and offers some variations that you might like.
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