Reciprocal Teaching and Book Detectives

What is Reciprocal Teaching?

Reciprocal Teaching is a method for teaching understanding in reading.

It was first developed in America in the 1980’s. It is a method now used in schools around the world and it is becoming popular in Scottish schools.

Reciprocal Teaching improves understanding in reading by teaching children about 4 strategies. 

These strategies are:

• Predicting
• Clarifying
• Questioning
• Summarising

Good readers use these strategies all the time when they are reading. However, they use them without knowing it. Reciprocal Teaching helps make children aware of these strategies in order to improve their understanding.

How do you do Reciprocal Teaching?

During each Reciprocal Teaching lesson, children are asked to PREDICT what they think they might be about to read. This helps understanding because after they have predicted, pupils are encouraged to check if their predictions are correct.

Once the story has been read, children are asked to pick out words or pieces of story that they don’t understand. Then the children work together to Clarify what the words or phrases mean.

Pupils are also asked to make up Questions about the story. The teacher helps the pupils to pose more and more difficult questions.

Finally, the children are asked to give a Summary of what they have read. This is difficult but if children can summarise, this tells us they have really understood what they have read.

What are the benefits of Reciprocal Teaching for children?

Lots of studies have shown that Reciprocal Teaching improves children’s ability to understand what they read in all areas of the curriculum.

Children like it because:

• It’s fun and interactive
• They enjoy working in groups
• It doesn’t involve lots of writing
• It’s challenging 

Reciprocal Teaching benefits all pupils from the least to the most able.

Although the approach can be used with very young pupils, it works best from primary 3 onwards.

How can we help at home?

When hearing your child’s reading you can use some of the strategies. 

Before reading, ask your child to predict what they might be about to read. Ask them to explain their reasons for thinking this.

After reading, ask your child to tell you any words they are unsure of.  Work together to try and figure out what you think the word might mean

Take it in turns with your child to pose questions to one another about what you have read.

Ask your child to summarise what they have read in a few sentences.

What is Book Detectives?

In book detectives, each child within the group or class is given a specific job to do when reading. Some of these jobs are linked to the strategies used in Reciprocal Teaching. The jobs include:

• Summariser: The child’s job is to provide a summary
• Question master: Makes up some questions about the passage
• Prediction checker: Checks predictions made at the start of the story
• Clarifier:  Looks for difficult or unknown words
• Passage master: Looks for the most interesting passage in the story and has to give reasons for selecting that particular passage
• Feeling finder: Finds word or parts of the story which have something to do with feelings or emotions
• Word finder: Picks out interesting words used by the author
• Link maker: Make links between this story and other stories or real life events

What can we do at home?

Give your child one of these tasks when hearing their reading.

For example ask them to be a “Word Finder” and pick out 5 or 10 interesting words used by the author.

Alternatively, be a “Prediction Checker”. Before reading, take turns to make predictions. Then check the predictions as you read. Are the predictions right or wrong, or can’t we tell?

Be a “Feeling Finder”. Ask your child to think about how the character might feel at different parts of a story. Ask why they think the character feels like that or if there’s been a time that they have felt like the character.