Reciprocal reading to spice up your text-based assignements

(picture is available for free download here courtesy of Tes.com)

I found out about reciprocal reading from my colleague during a The Good Project community of practice meeting (hive of precious ideas!) and immediately thought it is a great way to activate students and create a situation when they can personally engage with the text to be read.

How does it work? Basically like in the picture:)

So, you divide students into groups of 4 (or 6, if you want to have an extra role of the boss and the illustrator) and you assign them the following roles:

The summarizer, who jots down the most important information and then presents it with their own words to the group.

The clarifier, whose job is to pay attention to anything that needs clarified in the text- vocabulary and/or ideas.

The questioner, who is busy creating questions about the fragment, which they then discuss within the group.

The predictor, who tries to forecast what might happen in the next part of the text.

The teacher divided the text that is to be studied into as many parts as there are roles within the group, and the students take turns to read one part (could be done aloud as well, also by the teacher). Once they finish reading the first part, they act out their roles, starting with summariser, followed by clarifier, then by questioner and finally the predictor. Then they read the next fragment and change roles, so that everyone gets to do a different role with each fragment.

Ideally, you should time the activity- I believe 2-3 minutes is a good time to complete each role.

Reciprocal reading works at all levels, as long as you choose a text of suitable length and level of difficulty.

Students are really engaged in this activity and all of them!

My personal feeling is it works best with narratives- I did it with the short story Popular Mechanics by Raymond Carver (available in four parts here), but I can imagine each short story read this way:)

Enjoy!

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