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What Is Reciprocal Teaching? Reciprocal Teaching is an instructional approach that teaches students a set of cognitive strategies intended to improve their reading comprehension. In reciprocal teaching students learn how to summarize the content of what they read, generate questions about it, clarify the content for others and predict the content of subsequent material. Reciprocal teaching skills are taught through a process of modeling and scaffolding in which the adult teacher guides students toward more mature versions of the skills. In a typical reciprocal teaching session, students read a segment of text and then take turns leading a discussion about it. The student who serves as the learning leader begins the discussion by asking a question and ends the discussion by summarizing the gist of what has been read. In addition, the learning leader also attempts to clarify the material whenever the group has difficulty understanding, and is also responsible for predicting what the subsequent content is likely to be. In effect, students learn how to carry out discussions of the subject matter structured by the four specific skills—posing questions, summarizing, clarifying and predicting. Initially, students are not able to do the skills effectively. The adult teacher intervenes to facilitate their progress. The adult take turns as the learning leader, and models effective, mature versions of the four skills. In addition, the adult scaffolds the student's attempt to lead the discussion by providing as much direct help as necessary to produce a question, clarify, predict and summarize. The term scaffold is an apt characterization because the adult provides support and structure to advance the student's development. A review of research on reciprocal teaching indicates that the procedure has a very positive effect on student understanding that persists even after students no longer practice reciprocal teaching in the classroom. For additional information about reciprocal teaching see: Brown, A.L., Palincsar, A.S., & Armbruster, B.B. (1984). Instructing comprehension-fostering activities in interactive learning situations. In H. Mandl, N.L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.). Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 255-286). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Brown, A.L. & Palincsar, A.S. (1989). Guided cooperative learning and individual knowledge acquisition. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 393-451). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Rosenshine, B. & Meister, C. (1994). Reciprocal teaching: A review of the research. Review of educational research, 64(4), 479-530.
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