According to Alverman and Phelps (1998) in their book, Content Reading and Literacy: Succeeding in Today’s Diverse Classroom, reciprocal teaching has two major features: (1) instruction and practice of the four comprehension strategies—predicting, question generating, clarifying, and summarizing and (2) a special kind of cognitive apprenticeship where students gradually learn to assume the role of teacher in helping their peers construct meaning from text.

According to Rosenshine & Meister (1994), there are four important instructional practices embedded in reciprocal teaching:

• Direct teaching of strategies, rather than reliance solely on teacher questioning
• Student practice of reading strategies with real reading, not with worksheets or contrived exercises
• Scaffolding of instruction; students as cognitive apprentices
• Peer support for learning

Reciprocal teaching involves a high degree of social interaction and collaboration, as students gradually learn to assume the role of teacher in helping their peers construct meaning from text. In essence, reciprocal teaching is an authentic activity because learning, both inside and outside of school, advances through collaborative social interaction and the social construction of knowledge (Alverman and Phelps, 1998).

The process of reciprocal teaching must be carefully scaffolded to ensure success for your students:

• Teachers need to explicitly teach and model the four basic strategies above: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. It is important that students understand that skilled readers employ these strategies every time they read something, and that this is a great habit to develop as a way to improve their comprehension skills. This can be accomplished with short pieces of fiction or nonfiction; the entire class can brainstorm examples of the various types of comprehension strategies. Small groups can then choose 3-4 questions from each category to answer and share with the entire class.

• Once students understand and are able to apply all four strategies, it is time for the students to work independently at first, by annotating examples of all four strategies on a short text for homework. Students can annotate in the margins, or the teacher may want to create a graphic organizer or note sheet where students can record their questions and commentary.

• Then, the next day in class, small groups form to share their annotations and construct their own meaning of the text. One student in the group is chosen/appointed/elected to be "the teacher" of the group. His/her responsibilities are essentially to facilitate the group’s task, progress, and time management.

• During the discussion, it is crucial that each student cite reference points in the texts that are the focal point of his/her questions and/or evidence to clarify or support their questions and/or commentary.

• During the discussion, students add commentary to their sheets/annotations to construct a richer and deeper understanding of the text.

• The teacher spends his/her time circulating the room to visit each group’s discussion. He/she might ask a follow-up question to enrich the conversation.

• The teacher should structure some sort of closure activity, such as a whole class discussion that is built around questions that groups still have or interesting commentary that each group discovered as a result of their discussion.

Click here for a graphic organizer that presents
all four reciprocal teaching skills.

In the chart below are some sample questions that students might pose for each of the four comprehension strategies based on the text, Night, by Elie Weisel.

How could I use, adapt or differentiate it?

• At the beginning, teachers may want to hand out a poem or short piece of fiction or nonfiction that he/she has annotated that models all four strategies.
• One suggestion is to start with very short pieces of literature or short sections of a larger work (a chapter or section of a novel, biography, etc.). This allows students to practice and hone their skills before moving on to longer readings.
• It is important that the role of "teacher" be rotated on a regular basis so that all students have a chance to be the leader of the group; this kind of validation is an important part of the process.