Reading Strategies and Reciprocal teaching

Long D. (2007). Increasing literacy in the high school library: Collaboration makes it happen. Teacher Librarian. 35 (1), 13-17. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27485713&site=ehost-live

The problem presented in Long’s (2007) article, “Increasing Literacy in the High School Library,” is that the “high school classrooms are filled with struggling readers.” In addition, because of “high-stakes testing,” many schools are trying to improve students’ reading scores. Long’s (2007) article “presents a successful collaborative project designed to implement a successful reading strategy—reciprocal teaching … within the confines of students’ library research.”

Reciprocal teaching is an instructional technique that promotes student thinking and interacting with text. As they read, students practice four comprehension strategies: predicting (making an educated guess about text content), asking questions (both recall and higher level), clarifying (words or concepts), and summarizing (identifying and restating main ideas or concepts). At first, the teacher models the use of these strategies in understanding content area texts. Later, students practice the strategies in group dialogues about the text. Eventually, students take responsibility for practicing the strategies (Long, 2007).

Long (2007) claims that many high school students lack the skills to read and learn from textbooks. Moreover, their content area teachers also may not know how to teach effective reading strategies using their textbooks in a way to teach students to succeed. Many teachers bring their classes to the library to do a research project; however, the research task of reading many resources is overwhelming to the students. This is usually where copy and pasting come in. Long (2007) states that when teachers are often frustrated with the research results, they will often either avoid research projects altogether or struggle with a search for effective strategies alone. This scenario offers the teacher-librarian the opportunity to collaborate with the classroom teacher.

The library media center provides a unique opportunity for collaboration among school professionals that can play a vital role not only in helping students learn to read the informational texts that they encounter, but also in assisting teachers to employ strategies to teach students to do so. (Long, 2007)

“Research shows that the reciprocal teaching method has been effective in helping students improve their reading ability and in promoting reading comprehension, as measured on standardized tests” (Long, 2007 quoted Palinscar & Brown, 1984; and Carter, 1997).

The selected project was based at a high school in California in language arts and government; however, this reciprocal teaching project can be applied to other subjects, as well. The administrator and the web-master were also involved. The students used templates for notes and bibliographic entries. The teacher-librarian was able to demonstrate appropriate information literacy skills and high-quality resources. Long (2007) affirms that “this project is an important demonstration of how a school library media teacher can work with other teachers to further the academic goals of a school and positively affect student achievement.”

Personally, I have observed the main problem that Long (2007) presents--that students lack the skills to use informational text properly—many times in the library when teachers bring their classes in for research projects. I have had the opportunity to ask teachers if they would appreciate my templates for citing and note-taking. Most teachers take advantage of the fact that they are already typed out for them. I have noticed that students really appreciate the templates, as well. I have had the opportunity of collaborating with individual teachers; however, I would like to try the approach presented in this article of trying to collaborate with more than one subject at a time. When students see that teachers work together for student learning and success, they will be more willing to achieve with higher expectations put on them using the specific skills they have learned. Also, getting administration involved can only add to the success of student learning.