Steps in the Paired Reading Activity
1. Partners decide who will be the teller and who the listener.
2. They also decide how much material they will read. They may select
a paragraph, or they may select several paragraphs. It will depend
on the skill level of the students as well as on the difficulty of the text
or content of the material.
3. Both partners read the selected text silently, cueing each other when
finished.*
4. After both partners have closed the book, the teller orally recalls as
much of the reading as possible.**The listener may not speak or
interrupt except to clarify unclear points.
5. When the teller has exhausted his/her knowledge, the listener may
then share any additional information s/he remembers or correct any
misconceptions of the teller. The books remains closed at this point.
6. When the listener has exhausted his/her knowledge, both partners
open the textbooks and skim the reading for ideas or facts that they
may have missed or not clearly understood.
7. The process is then repeated for another segment of text, with the
roles swapped; the teller becomes the listener, and vice versa.
Roles are alternated until the reading is completed.
8. When the reading is completed, students may work together to
reflect more on the reading by writing a summary or taking notes or
some other activity.***
Special directions for mathematics text:
*The teller, at this step, not only reads the text, but upon confronting an
example problem, copies down onto paper the problem, but not the
solution.
**At this point, the teller attempts to duplicate the solution to the example
problem if one exists.
***The paired students might work on the guided practice section of the
reading at this point, or they might attempt some of the exercises at the
end of the reading.
Larson, C., & Dansereau, D. (1985). Cooperative learning in dyads. Journal of Reading, 29, 516520.