Reading Inspires!
A Podcast with Reading is Fundamental
Reciprocal Teaching Strategies- Boost Reading Comprehension
Recently I had the pleasure of being a featured guest speaker on Reading Inspires- Reading is Fundamental’s popular podcast. I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to my conversation with the wonderful Erin Bailey Ed.D. RIF Vice President of Literacy Programs and Research. We discuss and share evidence-based ways to improve comprehension and engagement using the Fab Four.
🎧 Listen here: https://www.rif.org/podcasts/reciprocal-teaching-strategies-boost-comprehension-lori-oczkus
Erin begins every episode for by asking guests a thoughtful question,
“Why did you go into teaching and literacy?”
What a wonderful question! Her prompt took me down memory lane to my bookmobile days as a child remembering the feel and smell of climbing aboard and jumping into summer reading and books. Those early experiences always remind me that great reading instruction always starts with a love of great books!
My journey with reciprocal teaching began years later when I discovered my own students struggled to truly comprehend what they were reading. I wanted to find an approach that would help them become thoughtful, independent readers—not just accurate decoders.
That search led me to reciprocal teaching, or what I affectionately call The Fab Four: or Reciprocal Teaching with the strategies-Predict, Question, Clarify, and Summarize.
Since then, I’ve had the privilege of sharing these strategies with hundreds of thousands of educators around the world. Together we harness the power of these strategies and dramatically boost student achievement while following the science of reading. I work side by side with teachers in many diverse schools across the globe. This hands-on teaching serves as the foundation for professional development sessions based on my ASCD book, Reciprocal Teaching at Work with a foreword by researcher John Hattie.
During the podcast, Erin and I discuss
Ways the Fab Four strategies transform literacy -we share the reciprocal teaching method or the Fab Four- predict, question, clarify, summarize and ways the strategies work together (like the Beatles!) to boost student comprehension.
The power of gradual release, modeling, and student discussion techniques that teachers can use with any text at any grade level to transform student comprehension and yield boosts of .74 or two years in one year -sometimes in just a few months!
The impressive research behind reciprocal teaching, including its ranking as one of researcher John Hattie’s meta-analysis of evidence-based teaching strategies.
Real world success stories including students who grew two years in a few months and a school in Australia that climbed from 14th place to 2nd.
Practical lessons to begin using reciprocal teaching tomorrow for results in your classroom.
How reciprocal teaching fits within the science of reading framework
As we ended the episode, Erin asked me to reflect on one final question.
How does literacy inspire you?
My answer immediately took me to another favorite place - Central Park in New York City. Whenever I visit, I love to make time to stop at the Imagine mosaic honoring John Lennon. Since I nicknamed reciprocal teaching - The Fab Four - the Beatles metaphor has always felt like a perfect fit.
My dream is simple:
To imagine every student becoming a strong reader who develops not only the skill to read but also the will and ultimately the thrill of reading- a phrase beautifully captured by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey.
I hope you’ll listen to the podcast, share it with colleagues, and join me in imagining classrooms where every student has the opportunity to become an engaged, thoughtful, lifelong reader.
