4 Foundations of Reciprocal Teaching

1. Scaffolding: Providing support, coaching, and corrective feedback for students as they begin to use reciprocal teaching strategies.
2. Think-alouds: Modeling the use of cognitive strategies by pausing to reflect aloud in front of students. Making thinking visible to students.
3. Metacognition: Thinking about one’s own thinking. Through reciprocal teaching, students learn to reflect on their own cognitive processes.
4. Collaborative learning: Students work together to construct meaning from text.

Source: Reciprocal Teaching at Work: Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension by Lori Oczkus, IRA, 2003.