For my Inquiry this year I will be investigating how Reciprocal Reading strategies can be used to accelerate student's comprehension, and help them to develop confidence when reading, inferring, and analysing different unfamiliar texts.
"Reciprocal teaching (RT) is a process involving four distinct activities (questioning, clarifying, summarising and predicting) employed in a student-led, team approach to develop reading comprehension skills among primary students." (Cooper, T., Greive, C, 2009)
We have begun by introducing the concepts in teacher led discussions to familiarise students with concepts that they may be unfamiliar with, and helping them to further unpack the steps which they may be aware of, but have not done very often.
Strategies
While students are completing independent work, the groups will work with me to go through the steps;
1. Predicting - What do we think the text will be about? What can we use as clues to predict what the text will be about? (Title, colours, images, text type)
2. Questioning - Throughout the close reading of the text we will stop to ask questions about the text using the 5 W's and H (who, what, when, where, why, and how) to further extend comprehension, and make connections between the text and their world.
3. Clarifying - When students read unfamiliar texts they can often become hindered by encounters with vocabulary, or lexical phrases which they may not be familiar with. The purpose of the Clarifying step is to empower students to use different strategies to become familiar with these words, whether that is by asking their peers, the teacher, or by using their research skills to find out more.
4. Summarising - A lot of our students are able to decode, and to infer meaning, but struggle to find the overall meaning or purpose behind a text. By summarising students will develop the ability to look at the larger picture, to demonstrate their learning, and to give feedback about what they enjoyed, or found interesting within a text.
Reflection:
Students have found the Questioning area difficult, as they are required to make connections to the wider world. We have discussed in various PLD sessions the idea of giving students more "mirror" texts, ones in which they can see themselves, or characters that are more relatable to them means they are able to make those connections easier.
Discussions have also been challenging as students are sometimes hesitant to speak up in group discussions, especially when not guided by a teacher who can prompt them to share their ideas. I find their hesitancy can often be connected to the idea that they have to give the "right" answer.
Moving Forward:
Moving forward we will continue to build their confidence in sharing ideas (not answers, but ideas) about the text by connecting this with other opinion based texts, and writing tasks.
References
Cooper, T., & Greive, C. (2009). The effectiveness of the methods of reciprocal teaching: As applied within the NSW primary subject human society and its environment: An exploratory study. TEACH Journal of Christian Education, 3(1), 11.
Oczkus, L. D. (2003). Reciprocal Teaching at Work: Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension. Order Department, International Reading Association, 800 Barksdale Road, PO Box 8139, Newark, DE 19714-8139
