What is Reciprocal Teaching?

Reciprocal Teaching is a venerable strategy that accelerates students’ learning competence as it teaches students to probe text in an effort to construct meaning from the same. Using Reciprocal Teaching strategies, students learn to mimic processes and procedures expert readers use. Most notable is the process becomes a habit of mind in as few as 20 consecutive days of practice. Learners engaging in Reciprocal Teaching use a group of four strategies when reading; these are predicting, summarizing, clarifying information that is not clearly understood, and questioning the text and what the text reveals.

By description, Reciprocal Teaching is a reading improvement strategy that mimics the processes that expert readers employ when they are engaged in reading or learning. As such, Reciprocal Teaching is a holistic reading (and learning) improvement strategy that is ideal for strengthening meta-cognitive skills and helping students learn how to read better. Students use four strategies as they read text and discuss the same in a focused effort to construct meaning.

Students engage in RT dialogues which are sessions of about 30 minutes where they (1) raise questions about the text (and seek to answer these as self -checks on comprehension), (2) clarify ambiguous vocabulary and elements of the text that are confusing to the students (using strategies taught to them explicitly), (3) summarize main points as these emerge in the text (and thereby check for their emerging understanding), and (4) predict what should logically come next in the text (or imagine based on the constructed meaning). These strategies inform them when they have wandered off, missed the point, are confused, cannot predict what is coming up, or are not following the gist of that to be learned. In short, the goal is to help them become more strategic as readers and learners as well.

Metacognitive Strategies That Improve Reading & Learning Capacity

How does Reciprocal Teaching promote reading and learning comprehension? In Reciprocal Teaching dialogues, students are taught to use four strategies to construct meaning from text that they are reading at the same time that they are developing skill in strategic reading which requires readers to employ two ongoing mental activities consistently as they read: (a) they read and understand the content at the same time during the reading process; and (b) they remain alert for instances when they are not achieving full comprehension and take appropriate steps to remediate the situation.