TEACHING STRATEGIES

Reciprocal Teaching: A Guide for Educators

4 June 2024/ By Zineb DJOUB

Developing students’ metacognition has become an essential teaching goal in this ever-changing world. The students’ ability to think about their learning, and understand how to self-regulate and adjust their performance on learning tasks is foundational to their academic success and lifelong learning journey. Teaching explicitly metacognitive strategies is thus deemed necessary for every student. This blog post delves into one such powerful strategy—Reciprocal Teaching: its meaning, benefits, and how it works, and it suggests some practical tips for implementing it in your classroom.

What is Reciprocal Teaching?

Reciprocal Teaching (RT) was developed by Palincsar and Brown (1984) who used it in their research as an active reading strategy to improve students’ comprehension.

It is frequently used in reading comprehension where students in small group reading sessions engage in the four tasks:

Predicting: Students should predict what comes next in the text while reading.

Clarifying: They clarify any misunderstandings or unclear points (‘I think the author is saying….’).

Questioning: They generate self-testing questions, that both reflect an understanding of the text while guiding ongoing inquiry to improve understanding. So, they need to raise comprehension questions (answers in the text) and critical thought questions (require their opinions).

Summarizing: Students summarize what they have read. They can work in small groups to create a semantic map and share it with others.

So, Reciprocal Teaching is a cooperative learning instructional method in which students’ thinking processes about a shared learning experience are modelled and revealed by natural dialogue.

Benefits of Reciprocal Teaching

The strategy can be used to improve student reading comprehension and metacognition skills, and also generate personal interaction.

Research on Reciprocal Teaching found that when students worked in small groups and developed individual expertise in reading skills, they taught the skills to other group members and the overall understanding of the group members improved (Palinscar & Brown, 1984).

However, because of its collaborative and interactive nature, Reciprocal Teaching can be adapted and applied to various contexts beyond reading classes.

The strategy was found to help students hone their skills in finding, recording, and organizing information in preparation for writing (Capanzana & Avilla,2017). So, teachers can use it in problem-solving tasks and project-based learning.

Further, Reciprocal Teaching also aids students in developing comprehension and broadening students’ subject-matter vocabulary (Muthik, et al.2022). We can incorporate it in language classes to practice language skills, build vocabulary, and help retention in different subjects.

Since Reciprocal Teaching provides students with the opportunity to debate their ideas with their group members (Al-Saraireh,2013), it can be used as a tool to foster classroom discussion and develop students’ critical thinking and their perspectives, and opinions.

How does Reciprocal Teaching work?

To help students use Reciprocal Teaching effectively in any lesson, it’s essential to clarify first its purpose and process.

So, start with modelling the strategy’s use by demonstrating how it works in practice. If you aim to improve students’ reading comprehension, you can model each of the four strategies by verbally articulating their application while reading a short paragraph.

Then, provide guided practice where students, in small groups, read a text and practice the four key strategies with your guidance. You can provide scaffolding by offering prompts or questions to guide their thinking.

When the students become more comfortable and familiar with Reciprocal Teaching, they can assume the role of the teacher, guiding their peers through the strategies and using them on a new text.

After independent practice, encourage students to reflect on what strategies worked well, what challenges they faced during the process, and how they can improve.

Expanding Reciprocal Teaching beyond reading

Reciprocal teaching isn’t just for reading comprehension, we can also adapt it to a range of classroom activities such as vocabulary building, writing workshops, discussion sessions, and project-based learning.

# Vocabulary building

Students can use reciprocal teaching strategies to collaboratively explore and understand new vocabulary in a structured and engaging way. Here’s how you can apply the four strategies for vocabulary instruction.

Predicting: Students begin by guessing the meaning of a new word based on its context in a sentence or paragraph.

Clarifying: Students then look up the exact definition of the word in dictionaries, thesauruses, or online sources. This step allows them to verify their predictions and better understand the word.

Questioning: After finding the definition, students investigate other meanings of the word and consider how it might be used in various contexts. They can also create questions that require the word to be used in different sentences, which promotes deeper engagement and understanding.

Summarizing: Students summarize the word’s meanings and applications to create a thorough entry for their vocabulary journals, including the word synonyms, antonyms, and example sentences or they can use mind mapping to understand and remember them easily.

# Classroom discussions

Because of its collaborative nature, Reciprocal Teaching can encourage students to participate in classroom discussions. You can incorporate it into discussion sessions in Socratic Seminars and Literature Circles to make them more engaging and productive.

Predicting: Before the discussion, students brainstorm ideas about the topic individually or in small groups.

Clarifying: During the discussion, they take turns, sharing and explaining their ideas to the rest of the group.

Questioning: Students pose questions to their peers to generate more ideas and arguments.

Summarizing: At the end of the discussion, students summarize the key takeaways from the discussion and reflect on this learning experience.

# Writing workshops

Teachers can also use reciprocal teaching to improve students’ writing skills. Here is how:

Predicting: Students brainstorm ideas related to the topic.

Clarifying: Students start drafting their ideas. They should start with the outline to structure better their ideas.

Questioning: Students review their drafts and generate questions to guide their revisions (e.g., are my arguments clear? Are my ideas coherent? Have I provided enough evidence? etc.). They can also involve in peer editing where they exchange feedback and learn from each other.

Summarizing: Students reflect on the whole writing experience (both the writing process and product). They can write a brief reflection on what they learned, their writing difficulties, and how they overcame them.

# Project-based learning

Since Reciprocal Teaching can foster collaboration and critical thinking, incorporating the strategy in Project-based learning can be a valuable learning experience.

Predicting: Students can discuss, in groups, the project’s main issues or challenges and predict potential outcomes.

Clarifying: Students investigate the issue and use resources to gather data.

Questioning: Students address questions, analyse key findings or data, and assess resources and strategies.

Summarize: They summarize key ideas or findings and reflect on the research process.

To conclude, Reciprocal Teaching can help students reflect on their learning processes, self-regulate, develop essential skills, and engage in meaningful discussions. By incorporating this strategy into your instruction, you can create a more dynamic and engaging learning environment where every student can thrive.

References

Al-Saraireh, A.M.F. (2013). Effective Use of Reciprocal Teaching Strategy in The Development of Academic Achievement and Skill of Solving Problems in Geography for Sixth-Grade Female Students in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Int. J. Acad. Res. Psychol. B5(4) 435–444.

Capanzana, C.O. & Avilla, R.A. (2017). Reciprocal Teaching Approach with Self-Regulated Learning (RT-SRL): Effects On Students’ Reading Comprehension, Achievement And Self-Regulation in Chemistry. The Normal Lights 11 (2) 31–59.

Muthik, A., Muchyidin, A. & Persada, A. R. (2022). The Effectiveness Of Students Learning Motivation On Learning Outcomes Using The Reciprocal Teaching Learning Model. J. General Educ. Humanit. 1 (1) 21–30.

Palincsar, A., & Brown, A., (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension – fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1 (2), 117-175.