Paige Cole, Michelle Lindsey, Elizabeth Sears, Stephanie Shumacher
LLED 6010 Module 7
The Fabulous Four
Paula the Predictor
Clara Clarifier
Quincy the Questioner
Sammy Summarizer
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Reading comprehension is often overlooked as an early
reading instruction focus.
However, it is now clear from research that reading
comprehension skills, too, should be taught “from the onset of
reading instruction” (R&C, p. 158).
Reciprocal Teaching stood out to us because it incorporates
many strategies for effective comprehension instruction.
It is also applicable to many grade and ability levels, from
emergent to fluent readers, and is adaptable to almost all
content areas.
National Reading Panel research has shown that “teaching
children how to coordinate the use of a set or package of
comprehension strategies as they read and discuss what
they’ve learned with peers and with teacher support yields
particularly strong results” (R&C, p. 159).
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RT uses a set of four reading
comprehension strategies:
predicting, questioning,
clarifying, and summarizing.
Teachers use a gradual
release method, along with
many best practices:
prediction and summarization
prompts, graphic organizers,
question-forming strategies,
collaborative learning,
activation of background
knowledge, understanding
story structure, using text
supports, and taking
affirmative steps to clarify
unknown vocabulary or
concepts. Both set students up
for success when working
independently.
Predict
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?
What if?
I think
I bet
I wonder
I predict
Clarify
Tricky words
What do I do when there
are words I do not know?
Confusing ideas
What do I do when the
ideas don’t make sense?
Question
Summarize
What happened…
First, next, then
The book was about…
The main idea was…
I learned…
Now it’s YOUR turn!
Chapter 1: COLUMBUS, THE INDIANS, AND HUMAN
PROGRESS
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the World
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Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their
villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the
strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords,
speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, the information that Columbus
wanted most was: Where is the gold?
He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the
lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the Atlantic-the
Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For, like other informed people of his time, he
knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get to the Far East.
Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France,
England, and Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the
nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land.
Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the
Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was
becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy
anything.
There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco
Polo and others had brought back marvelous things from their overland
expeditions centuries before. Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople
and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea
route was needed. Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern
tip of Africa. Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean.
Reciprocal Teaching
1. Choose the order of student leaders who will facilitate
each segment/paragraph and generate discussion.
2. Begin by examining the text and predicting the topic.
Consider reading headings, chapter titles, etc.
3. Student leader will read paragraph out loud or teacher will
read but everyone will follow along.
4. Student leader facilitates and records discussion that
focuses on
 Predicting
 Questioning-ask about important information
 Clarifying-clarify words, ideas, even pronunciations
 Summarizing-summarize text and predict what may
happen next
5. Repeat process while rotating student leaders.
Secondary Classroom
Elementary Classroom
A lively discussion of
literature and the
teachers behind the
scene.
http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=Uyys7MjJeE&feature=related
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An example within
the science content
area
http://vimeo.com/1351
6178
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Students have high level of engagement with
the text and with each other as they hold a
small group discussion.
The teacher provides students with graphic
organizers, an effective tool for comprehension
instruction, and conferences with individual
students.
Students have moved into an independent
stage with this strategy. They’re sharing their
thoughts and ideas with each other in a
collaborative setting.
Students’ responses seem authentic and
insightful.
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The teacher models how to explore text supports and
activate background knowledge as she works
through the four comprehension strategies featured
in RT: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and
summarizing.
Students use hand gestures to tell the teacher which
strategies they think they should employ at different
points in the text, and they discuss with their partners
how to use the comprehension strategies.
These students are equally engaged and excited,
and we can see them activating reading
comprehension strategies in order to dialogue about
the text.
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Adaptability makes RT a useful strategy across the
content/grade levels.
It lends itself readily to use in small group settings and
guided reading, and is easily modeled by the
teacher.
It is a great way to get students talking about text,
and we enjoyed seeing students taking active
leadership roles in their discussions
We wondered if the elementary students really were
able to connect the movement of the hand gestures
with what these gestures represent, and we are
curious about how the hand movements solidify the
concepts for them.
One of many useful strategies for
teachers to use
 If RT is used consistently across grade
levels, then by the time students are in
secondary school they will have
internalized powerful skills which will help
them engage with a text as fully as the
high school students in the clip did.
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