Note 319 – Reciprocal Reading

I went to my daughters’ school this evening to learn about reciprocal reading and how I can help them with this technique. I wasn’t really sure what it was all about, but learnt quite a bit in half an hour. It’s basically a strategy that teachers use with their pupils help them to understand a given text. There are four different roles (or components) to reciprocal reading which are questioning, clarifying, summarising and predicting.

According to Wikipedia reciprocal teaching was first developed by Palincsar and Brown in 1986 and is “an instructional activity that takes the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text” and these discussions tend to take place in small groups.

Think2read.co.uk explain reciprocal reading as “a successful guided reading comprehension method widely used in USA, Australia, New Zealand and more recently in UK schools”.

The part that parents play in this

As a working parent, I do a mix of ‘the girls reading to me’ and ‘me reading to the girls’ and we try to do it most nights. What I am now realising is that I’ve only been focusing on getting through the books (so they can get the next one) and helping them to learn and understand new words. I’m now starting to see a whole new challenge for them (and me for that matter!).

Have you heard of reciprocal reading?

Until tomorrow…

Sandra

Related articles

• Reciprocal reading (nickynewbury.wordpress.com)