How to Use Reciprocal Teaching Method

Reciprocal Teaching

Teaching students can be challenging especially they have different interests and levels of understanding. This is why teachers can use different strategies in teaching. If you’re a teacher, one of the strategies that you can use is reciprocal teaching.

Reciprocal teaching is an interactive method of teaching the students. This is effective in getting everybody’s attention in the class as well as motivating students to participate in the discussion. Instead of the usual teaching method in which the students are asked to read something to be discussed after, with reciprocal teaching the subject or story will be discussed part by part. This type of teaching consists of five parts, which are predicting, reading, clarification, questioning and summarizing.

Before starting the class, explain to the students how the method works. If there are reading materials you need to distribute, hand them out before the discussion. It’s best to have their dictionaries ready so they can easily check out words that are not familiar to them. Also, prepare cards with different colors and hand them out to some students. Start the class by reading the first part of the story then ask someone to make a prediction on what’s going to happen to the next part. Pick a color and whoever holds the card with that color will make the prediction. This will be exciting for the kids since they can use their imagination in coming up with something on what might happen next. After the student gives the prediction, let him read the next part and ask the class to follow silently. Ask him to stop on a specific part so you can discuss about what was just read. This will be the clarification stage. See if there are words that the student doesn’t understand and clarify using the help of a dictionary.

Discuss the part that was just read and allow the class to participate in the discussion. Welcome any questions that they may have and let the class share their ideas. Ask the student to hand the card to the person next to him. Repeat the process until you’re done with the lesson. Summarizing is the last step in reciprocal teaching. Summarize the lesson that you just discussed in the class so they can remember the gist.