Make it Make Sense!
📰A Template We ALL Can Use to Help Students Make Sense of Our Content
TL;DR? Read text that looks like this!
Our jobs, regardless of what we teach, revolve around helping students make meaning of our content. On a daily basis, we are helping students make sense of content like:
Passages of text
Primary source documents
Works of art
Business documents like business plans, budgets, accounting ledgers, and market summaries for individual stocks
Pieces of music
Scientific journal articles
The results of a mathematical equation
A conversation spoken or written in a language that is not the individual’s primary language
Etc., etc., etc.
Often our content involves vocabulary and concepts that are brand new to students, requiring a lot of effort on their part to sift through. This is so challenging! So how can we help students overcome the challenges of making meaning out of our content? Try implementing reciprocal teaching!
A Reciprocal Teaching Template
In the book, The Shift to Student-Led, Tucker & Novak (2022) suggest that, when we are teaching new content (such as any of the examples listed above), assigning students a specific role and objective helps them to more effectively interact with the content. In the Tucker/Novak reciprocal teaching model, students assume one of four roles - predictor, summarizer, questioner, or clarifier - before sharing their analysis with fellow group members. Their model is designed specifically for reading passages of text, but the verbiage can be adapted for any of the content listed above. What do you think of this template? Click this link to make your own copy!
Adapt as Necessary
The beauty of this template is its adaptability! These roles can be adapted and scaffolded to meet your content needs, Here are a few ideas:
Add, substitute, or remove roles to meet your content needs.
Jess Parent has added the role of “Visualizer” in her class. Take a peek at her outstanding reciprocal teaching guide currently in use in her freshman English classes. Notice how clearly she defines the skills and expectations for each role.
Krista Day has found great success using reciprocal teaching roles to help her AP students comprehend and analyze passages from Hamlet. Notice that Krista also has very clearly defined student roles but has chosen a more narrow focus for this content.
Require more or less of a task depending upon student level or content needs. For example, if you’re reading a scientific journal you may want to focus more heavily on the “Clarifier” task and increase the number of vocab words to 5 or more. Perhaps you would eliminate the “Predictor” task because students don’t have any background knowledge on which to base relevant predictions.
Have students do any or all of the tasks individually, then debrief and/or use it as a pre-test and/or a formative assessment.
Etc., etc., etc.
Want to Learn More? Join CAT and/or Chat With Our Colleagues!
As mentioned above, some of our colleagues have already deployed reciprocal teaching in their class. Chat up Jess and Krista and pick their incredibly 🧠 big brains 🧠 to see how reciprocal teaching works for them and might work for you!
You may also consider joining our CAT Team this year! All staff are welcome to attend. In CAT, we explore widely applicable teaching strategies like those espoused by Tucker & Novak. Most importantly, our learning is done in a collegial environment of teachers who are eager and excited to build our practices. We’d love to see you there. Our first meeting will be right after school on September 30. BOLO for more info in your email Inbox!
Want to kick around some ideas for incorporating reciprocal teaching in your classroom? Just give a shout and we can do that! Keep rocking, PHS!
Reference:
Tucker, C. R., & Novak, K. (2022). The Shift to Student-Led. Impress, LP.