Reciprocal Teaching for MLs
Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal teaching is a highly effective instructional practice. According to John Hattie, it is one of the best strategies because of its high effect size ( .74!) on learning. Reciprocal teaching promotes engagement, comprehension, and metacognition, but another HUGE benefit of reciprocal teaching is that it shifts a learning experience from teacher-centered to learner-centered.
Reciprocal teaching involves prediction, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. However, this ML-friendly reciprocal reading format has been modified by removing the questioning role and adding prompts and language frames. This modified version provides more air time and linguistic support. Quality questions could be created in a small group after navigating the text- or as a whole class after this ML-friendly version of reciprocal teaching.
When selecting a text for this activity, look for something relatively short and at an instructional level. Sites like Newsela, Commonlit, ReadWorks, and News in Levels provide texts at varying Lexile levels.
To get started:
Introduce the strategy by modeling each role with a text.
Group students into groups of 3 and allow them to practice.
Move toward independence by monitoring the groups less closely.
Add questions by adding a questioner to the group or creating questions as a class.
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