Reciprocal Teaching

PREPARATION: Select a challenging text for the whole class.  Create/assign student groups with a minimum of 5 students per group.  Determine how student groups will show a visual representation of their ideas. Create an essential Question that will guide the group work.

INDEPENDENT WORK:  First, give students an opportunity to spend some time reading the text with their pencils down. Ask them, “What do you notice?”

GROUP ROLES: Assign a specific role to each student in the group and have the students complete a second read only focusing on their specific role:  Here are role tents that can be used.

1. • • Clarifier:

       1. • Looks for new vocabulary or words that are confusing

          • Identifies unknown words or concepts

     • Questioner:

       1. • Creates Costa’s Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 questions from the passage or text

          • Asks questions about words or concepts that are unclear

     • Summarizer:

       1. • Creates a brief summary of the main ideas and concepts

          • Provides the main idea from the reading

     • Predictor:

       1. • Makes predictions about the next section of the text or topic

          • Justifies predictions based on facts in the current reading assignment

          • Checks predictions at the end of the reading assignment

     • Visualizer:

       1. • Draws the main idea with strong visual cues and images

          • Evokes the five senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, tasting) and captures them in descriptions

GROUP DISCUSSION: Have the students each share out their findings based on their specific roles. Students use language frames to engage in a discussion to further understand the text. 

GROUP PRESENTATION: Student groups will create a visual representation to present to the whale class.  Each role adds their work on the group poster (butcher paper, construction paper, etc..)  Student group presents their work to the class.