**Perfekt auch für einen Unterrichtsbesuch, da die Methode  von vielen Fachseminarleitern bekannt und beliebt ist.** Für mehr Informationen über "Reciprocal Reading": Palincsar, A. S. & Brown, A. (1984). Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension Monitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction.

Includes: six task cards for group work while reading.

Time required for activity: about 60-90 min. These task cards enable to model reading strategies that effective readers use when encountering difficulties (questioning, summarizing, clarifying and predicting). These strategies are not obvious to all readers, especially younger readers.

Why these task cards can help relunctant readers...

Students often struggle, even in High School, to understand what parts of a text are essential and this has to be explicitly practiced. In traditional classrooms, students are often given a text to read with vocabulary or comprehension questions that they should answer. But these questions don't always enable students to be active in their thinking process as it has already been decided for them what parts of the text they should focus on. Students should learn to decide what they should focus on and learn to think critically.

Recommendations: using these task cards only once is not enough for students to actively incorporate these reading strategies. Do not use these cards for every lesson either as students will soon lose interest. Use instead these task cards 2-3 times over the school year, depending on the students' reading level. Even students in High School stuggle when reading complex texts and will enjoy the cooperative reading activity.

Before reading...

• Make sure that the text/parts are rather short the first time you test this activity and make sure that you have enough time for this activity as well as the reflexion. This activity can take more time than you expected and it can be frustrating for students to not being able to test all strategies or reflect on the effectivity of the strategies because of time-management issues.
• Ask students what strategies they use when struggling with an unknown text. Do they use a dictonary? Do they re-read the sentence? After a brain-storming, tell them that even good readers often struggle understanding what they read. And that's why they use at least four strategies that will be practiced today. You can also present the four strategies names (ex. "The Questioner") and make them guess what the strategies could consist of.
• In groups of 4 students, hand-out the text that will be read. Each member of the group chooses one different strategy (print out the strategies/task cards in difficult colors to avoid chaos!) and each student should read the same paragraph, but concentrating on their task card. Make it clear that all students should have used the four different strategies/task cards by the end of the lesson.

While reading...

• After having read the first paragraph or part of the text and filled in the task cards, ask all students to present their findings following a specific process:"

With older and/or more experienced students, you can ask, before giving the instructions, what strategies THEY think should come first and last.

Important is that all students should be involved while listening and either comment and/or respond on the students' findings.

After reading...

• Once the first paragraph/part has been read, continue with the second paragraph. Every student take a new task card/strategy and repeat the same process.
• Important!! Leave time for reflexion: questions that can be asked during a classroom discussion:

1. Did you already use these strategies beforehand?

2. What strategies helped you the most?

3. Would you use these strategies again?

4. Did this activity help you? In what way?