Reciprocal Teaching:
Session 2
Aims of Session
• Opportunities to share experiences of RT so far – identify
benefits & problems
• What are metacognitive skills?
• Why are they important?
• What are the links between these skills and reading
comprehension?
• Provide a brief introduction to other approaches to
promoting comprehension
Workshop 1: Time for Reflection
• How has it gone so far?
- How have you implemented the approach?
- How have the pupils reacted / engaged?
- What have they done well?
- Which aspects have they found difficult?
- What practical issues or concerns have you
encountered?
Effective Learning: Three Fundamentals
Adey, Robertson & Venville, (2002) identify three
fundamental elements for effective cognitive
development / learning.
1. Opportunities for socially mediated learning
2. Cognitive challenge (i.e. opportunities to answer
questions / solve problems which do not have a simple
factual answer and requires thought to resolve)
3. Metacognitive challenge (i.e. opportunities to reflect on
their own thinking processes)
Socially Mediated Learning
The Theory Behind RT: Remember
Vygotsky?
Vygotsky argued that;
- Learning is socially constructed / language is of central
importance
- Children have a “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) –
this is the gap between what children know and what
they are capable of learning
- Adults (or peers) acting as models can “scaffold” children
in their attempts to learn / master new skills and bridge
the ZPD
Cognitive Challenge
What is Cognition?
“Cognition is connected with thinking or conscious mental
processes”
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Sensory Processes / Perception
Memory
Thinking
Language
Planning, evaluating, reasoning, justifying, categorising,
clarifying, judging, remembering, recalling, analysing,
synthesising, predicting, summarising, reflecting, processing,
problem-solving, perceiving, monitoring, comprehending,
conceptualising.
RT and Cognitive Challenge
• Pupils are encouraged to utilise / develop a wide
range of cognitive skills
• The nature of the dialogue used in RT
encourages learners to develop a deeper
understanding of the text – an understanding
that goes beyond the literal / factual.
Metacognition
• What is metacognition?
THINKING ABOUT THINKING
Or
“The ability to reflect consciously on one’s cognition and cognitive
ability”
Or
“The ability to plan & monitor thought processes”
Metacognition & Reading
Proficient use of metacognitive strategies in
reading enables children to:
• Evaluate purposes for reading
• Evaluate appropriate strategies
• Formulate plans for reading and for selecting
appropriate strategies
• Monitor comprehension
• Monitor what they do & don’t do well
• Self-regulate learning
What do readers with poor
metacognitive skills look like?
• Think the purpose of reading is to “learn all the words” or read
all the words correctly
• They lack an awareness of what their relative strengths and
weaknesses are
• They plan poorly and fail to take different variables into account
(e.g. allow less time for difficult texts / approach all reading
tasks in the same way)
• Less likely to re-read if they encounter comprehension
problems
• They are unaware of the strategies that able readers use.
• When given strategies – they find it difficult to evaluate which
strategy might be useful
• They get confused about the vocabulary of reading (i.e.
knowledge about language)
Workshop 2
• The findings of a recent RT study suggests that
pupils Standard Scores in Comprehension, as
measured by the NARA-II rose by 9 points.
However, their metacognitive awareness did not
improve to any great extent.
• The key question is - does this matter?
More Approaches to
Promoting Reading
Comprehension
Other Approaches to Promote
Reading Comprehension
• Book detectives
• Prepared Reading
• Silent Sustained Reading / Rapid Retrieval of
Information
• Paired Reading
• Paired Thinking
• Using audio tapes to support less able readers
Prepared Reading
• When children are given a passage, give them a
purpose for reading through giving them a focused
task. These tasks form the basis of discussion for
next day.
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find 10 interesting or unusual words
find your favourite paragraph
think of 10 adjectives to describe your character
think of 5 words which might describe how the character is feeling &
explain
think of some hobbies for your character – say why he would like them
Workshop: In pairs / small groups: Can you come up with others?
Sustained Silent Reading / Rapid
Retrieval of Information
Pupils read passage independently.
Teacher gives a series of questions (find the
part of the story which…….)
Children highlight this in some way (e.g. a
number) as quickly as possible.
Paired Reading - Procedure
Why Paired Reading?
• Cost effective
• Time efficient
• Highly effective (benefits for tutors
and tutees in terms of both their
basic reading skills & comprehension
Paired Thinking
• Based on paired reading
• Tutors asked to question tutees as well as
read with them
See www.dundee.ac.uk/psycholgy/trw
Supporting Less Able Pupils in
using RT
Paired Reading
• Use an able reader who is comfortable with the
RT format
• Use paired reading format. e.g.
- divide text into 2-3 sections
- follow paired reading procedure
- at the end of each section – follow RT dialogue
Using Audio Materials
• Ask able pupils to record a passage on to
a tape
• Pupils read passage along with recording
• Use RT format
• Overcomes decoding / fluency issues
Book Detectives
Context: Whole class / small group lesson. Pupils reading or being
read to.
Each pupil in the group / class is assigned a particular role:
• Summariser
• Question master
• Passage master
• Illuminator
• Word finder
• Illustrator
• Mind mapper
• Link maker
Book Detectives: Roles
• Summariser: Outlines key parts of the story
• Question master: Formulates questions for the group
• Passage master: Finds the most interesting paragraph in a
story
• Illuminator: Highlights aspects of the text associated with
emotions and feelings
• Word finder: Finds interesting, unusual, unknown words
• Illustrator: Provides a picture
• Mind mapper: Draws a mind map of all the important elements
of the story
• Link maker: Connects elements of the book to wider experience
(e.g. an event, a person, a film, another book)