Reciprocal Teaching by Kimberlie Ramirez

Reciprocal Teaching 

What is Reciprocal Teaching?

Reciprocal Teaching is an activity in which the students become the teachers. With teacher guidance, students learn how to lead discussions using strategies such as predicting, reading, questioning, clarifying and summarizing. When students become comfortable with Reciprocal Teaching, teachers allow them to lead their group into a new way of learning. Reciprocal Teaching is designed to help students advance on their comprehension and reading levels by allowing them to practice their strategies. 

Family Tree:

Reciprocal Teaching is most closely related to the Constructivism Theory. Accordion to the University of Sydney, "constructivism is a learning theory found in psychology which explains how people might acquire knowledge and learn." This means that students through Reciprocal Teaching may gain new experiences and knowledge because they are learning from a new point of view. Due to students leading their own groups, they will acquire knowledge from each other at their specific learning stage. 

Application:

Due to Reciprocal Teaching being such an important activity in our students learning, we need to apply it in steps. First as a class, the teacher and students select a short story to read. Together, students and the teacher predict what is going to happen on the story. After, the teacher reads the story to them and allows them to ask questions which she later clarifies. Finally, as a class, they resume the story and decide if their prediction was close to what really happened. Once students have gone through this process and feel comfortable, the teacher reviews the process with them and helps them understand what “reciprocal teaching” is. At this point, the teacher will create groups of no more than four and allow the students to read and analyze the story together. 

Related Websites:

How to Reciprocal Teach:

http://www.saisd.net/admin/curric/bilingual/pdffiles/reciprocal.pdf

Reciprocal Teaching for Higher Education:

http://isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/IJTLHE1.pdf

Reciprocal Teaching for Young Readers:

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/reciprocal_teaching

References:

"Reciprocal Teaching." Reading Rockets. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.

http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/reciprocal_teaching

"The University of Sydney - Faculty of Education and Social Work." Constructivism. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016. 

http://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/learning_teaching/ict/theory/constructivism.shtml

Images:

Literacy Solutions

http://www.literacysolutions.com.au/resources/reciprocal-teaching-prompt-card.php

iTeach Teachers Tech

http://iteachteacherstech.com/category/commoncore/