 Reciprocal teaching has hands down been the biggest bang for my educational minute that I've experienced I think in my career. Reciprocal teaching is a comprehension strategy to help students develop four areas of comprehending stories. Those areas are predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. And through reciprocal teaching we teach students to use Paula the Predictor as a reminder for them about what is predicting. So Paula the Predictor helps them to think about what's coming up in the story while we are reading and also at the beginning before we read. Claire the clarifier helps students think about the words that they don't understand to help them have a deeper understanding of the story. And Quincy the questioner he helps students to come up with questions throughout the story about why something might be happening and aids in their comprehension if if they're not understanding what is going on in the story. Sammy the summarizer he comes in at the end to help them sum up all the important details and remember all the parts that made this story. Through reciprocal teaching students have shown immediate response to the puppets and to the different characters to help them think about different areas of comprehending and understanding the story. Turn to your partner tell them what do you think? I chose to introduce reciprocal teaching one concept at a time starting with predicting. So I introduced students first to the puppet Paula the Predictor. This is Paula the Predictor and I asked the students what they thought a predictor would help us do as we listen to a read aloud and because we started this later in the year they had some good background knowledge already about what predicting was. I asked them what they thought she was holding in her hand and what she might be using it for and the kids also had a lot of background knowledge about crystal balls and what they were and how they were used. So we were able to dive into the story. Paula needs you to do some work. She wants to hear everybody's predictions. So if students wanted to come up and make a prediction like Paula would do they could come up and bounce the crystal ball and we taught them to use an action like this over their own hand when they wanted to come up and use that crystal ball which was very engaging and motivating for them. So that story they could come up bounce the ball share prediction. I predict that the girls are going to do some other other designs with the string. With the string. Okay. All right. Good predictions. I introduced Clara the Clarifier. We learned how to do an action to go along with Clara which is holding up spy glasses to our eyes and we talked about what kinds of questions Clara asks. She asks questions about what words mean that we don't know and it's a way visual cue when I look around. If I see little spy glasses up then I know that someone has heard a word that they're not sure of and they're wanting to ask. So I did that for each of the characters. Quincy the questioner gives them that opportunity to think out of the box. Maybe another character is going to appear in the story. So they really can get into the story that way too. I wonder what the still is. Yeah. That's a great question. I wondered that too. Why is it called in you it still? We had a little bit of prep up front to explain the different characters and help them understand their attributes. For example, Sammy the Summarizer. If a student didn't have any background knowledge of a cowboy and a lasso I needed to explain that to them and why Sammy the Summarizer was gathering all the details together. But overall introducing reciprocal teaching to my classroom was very easy. I have really enjoyed using the reciprocal teaching strategies in our classroom. It's been very motivating for students who normally wouldn't raise their hands to participate. In the past we've had those three or four go to students that always have their hand up and always want to share. But introducing the hand actions and the props and the puppets has really motivated kids who would normally just sit and listen and learn to speak up and participate. I had one little boy who didn't matter what subject area you would ask him a question and he was like this. Just shrugged shoulders not a word came out and then we were reading a story and he had the polypredicter puppet and he wanted to make a prediction. So he said, I think and then he stopped and he looked over at our word charts that we have to help us with the vocabulary that goes along with reciprocal teaching and he says no I mean I predict that the shark is going to be in the cave and he his eyes just lit up when he talked about that. So it was really interesting to see how it changed him and almost empowered him to speak you know about a story where he would never ever have participated before. We have stick and you hit it really hard and a candy. Have you done that at a birthday party before? All my students have a language delay and this has given them a framework to think about different parts of a read aloud or different parts of comprehension and I think it has really helped them to organize their thoughts in in responding to questions and being engaged in their learning. I find that having introduced the puppets and the hand signals and the props has kept them motivated and engaged and participating from beginning to end which also means I've seen more on-task behavior and less disruptions at the reading carpet and that's really improved students learning because they are attending the whole entire time. Now I look around and I see almost every student doing one action or another either to make a prediction to clarify to ask a question or at the end to summarize and I look around and all of my students are doing some sort of action because they just want to share. I've noticed that they are paying closer attention to visual cues in stories. They're looking at the backgrounds of pictures to see if they can find clues to make a prediction. They're just so eager to be able to share what they're experiencing. Interesting why does the girl have no mom or dad? Do you think they left her in front of the bear cage and maybe they went to buy more ice cream for her? They're fantastic at doing a read aloud and identifying you know questions asking the who what when where why summarizing in sequence they're they're wonderful at doing that but I'm noticing and what's most exciting to me is that they're doing it in other areas so for example the other day we were doing an animal classification activity in science and as I was walking around the room circulating they were doing a sorting activity and I was hearing things like I'm noticing that this animal has webbed feet so I'm thinking in my brain that some birds have webbed feet not all of them but some but I'm thinking this could be a bird and those are the kinds of conversations that I'm hearing students have with themselves and with their their peers about what they're learning and they're just so engaged and they're communicating about it in a meaningful way that simple conversation gave me so much information about what that particular student was learning and the types of thought processes that that he was using and I can assess them on their on their learning and where they're at in a really effective and authentic way and they they want to tell me what they know so it's just a fantastic way for me to see where they're at and they're not afraid of those bigger concepts and trickier words because I think if they're wrong it's the character is wrong not I'm wrong um they are willing to to take a risk and in sharing what they know and if they're wrong it's okay Clara's wrong I'm not wrong we are always trying to get our students to see themselves as leaders and take charge of their learning and I find the reciprocal teaching strategies give students that opportunity to be a leader and take charge of their own learning