Building Reading Proficiency at the Secondary Level: A Guide to Resources

What is it? How does it work?

Background:
Students use a set of four comprehension strategies on a common text, in pairs or small groups. In a related approach, ReQuest, the teacher leads the whole class in reciprocal questioning.

Overview:
Reciprocal Reading was developed in the mid-1980s by reading researchers Ann Brown and Ann-Marie Palincsar. Also called reciprocal teaching, it is a set of four strategies taught to struggling readers, primarily to develop their comprehension monitoring abilities. In pairs or small groups, participants sharing a common text take turns assuming the roles of teacher and student. After explicit instruction from a knowledgeable teacher, students engage in the following sequence:

1. Questioning
A student assumes the role of "teacher" and reads aloud a segment of a passage as group members follow along silently. The group members then pose questions that focus on main ideas.
2. Summarizing
The "teacher" answers and summarizes the content.
3. Clarifying
The group discusses and clarifies remaining difficulties in understanding.
4. Predicting
The group then makes a prediction about future content. Next, a second student takes on the role of teacher for a subsequent segment of text.

A related whole class strategy is ReQuest (Manzo, 1969) or reciprocal questioning, in which the teacher leads the whole class in silently reading together a segment of text. Students then question the teacher about the content. After a subsequent segment of text is read, the teacher questions the students. As the questioning process continues, students learn to imitate the teacher's questioning behavior.

Studies demonstrating the success of reciprocal reading with secondary students have used about 20 days for the intervention. Assessments in the form of observations, quizzes, and standardized tests were used to document student learning.