Reciprocal Teaching strategies used together helps students practice reading like experts read and as they strengthen their understanding and application of the strategies, their reading and learning competence improves.

Using these four strategies as a working group, readers learn to re-state prose in their own words (summarizing) and thus ensure they develop a type of reading self-review; they learn to ask main idea questions and by answering these demonstrate comprehension (questioning); they learn to use their own words as they re-state and evaluate a passage (clarifying); and they learn to make informed guesses about upcoming passages based on their attention to text clues (predicting).

Baseline consultants will teach Reciprocal Teaching strategies, reinforce these as participants’ practice and gain fluency using them in learning dialogues as a primary learning vehicle.

We Integrate Learning Tools as We Tutor Students: Self-Directed Study Skills

Another purpose of the program is to teach and reinforce foundational study skills, text features, and text structures and how these facilitate academic content learning. The aim is to encourage the use of multiple learning tools that fit the specific purpose for learning. These include notetaking, learning to adjust reading speeds to match the reading task, connecting the wholes to parts within informational text, and students mastering the main elements of the informational paragraph. When effectively integrated into academic content learning, study skills’ tools and cognitive strategies can extend learning in powerful ways.

Description of Foundational Tools

Baseline will rely on the following foundational learning tools or study skills to build a basic learning foundation that will provide learners with processes and skills useful for expanded learning. Based on the research emanating from reading in the content areas and reading to learn, the foundational tools ensure that students practice key learning tools that promote greater understanding in text. These include the following: the four Reciprocal Teaching strategies (summarizing, predicting, clarifying, and questioning), an understanding of the common structure and features of informational text, surveying or previewing text, skimming text, scanning text, notetaking, illustrating concepts, and mapping text. These literacy/learning tools provide learners with basic learning strategies needed for self-directed learning, metacognitive development, and construction of meaning.

Basic Literacy Skills for Content Learning & Metacognitive Development

We use the following skills and strategies to improve students’ ability to read, write, & learn better.

- How to use the 4 Reciprocal Teaching strategies (questioning, summarizing, predicting, and clarifying) to construct meaning from informational, narrative, and numeric text.

- How to identify and write on demand the common elements of the informational paragraph and the basic sentence.

- How to use the Cornell System of Note Takin to ensure students have a consistent structure to use when taking notes from informational text.

- How to use a systematic structure to survey informational text to get an overview of the contents within to activate schema and set purpose for reading.

- How to use a systematic structure to skim informational text to get a paragraph-by-paragraph overview of informational text as a review strategy or as a preparation for a quiz or test.

- How to use a systematic structure to scan informational text in search for answers

- How to create graphic depictions to connect main ideals with supporting ideas based on text patterns commonly used in informational text.

- How to use brainstorming to activate prior knowledge about a subject.

- How to write informational paragraphs that include topic sentences that include the writer’s tone as well as audience, purpose, unity, and coherence.

- How to write sentences that have clarity, correctness, and style

- How to avoid making high frequency major errors when writing