Reciprocal Teaching: PALS
Overview
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning. Through Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), learners alternate in performing a literacy activity and sharing their thoughts with a partner by taking on the roles of a coach and player. Students provide and receive immediate feedback from their peers, which can increase their Reading Fluency, Vocabulary development, and comprehension.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Starting at 1:06, watch how this ninth grade teacher uses reciprocal teaching with the roles of summarizer, questioner, clarifier, and predictor in her language arts classroom. By offering example questions, students are able to autonomously read and discuss in their small groups, deepening their comprehension and Social & Relationship Skills.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees.
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences.
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
