Complex cognitive skills such as reading comprehension are an instructional challenge partly because it is difficult to explain what the learner should do when executing the desired skill. Often, learning becomes a trial and error process with someone indicating the success or failure of attempts. The method of reciprocal teaching offered a different approach. In this strategy, the teacher first applies a specific skill related to the desired general skill (comprehension) and thinks aloud while making the effort. With reading, the skills in the original approach were to 1) ask a question, 2) make a prediction, 3) identify a confusion or difficulty, and 4) summarize. The teacher would first read a paragraph and then engage in one of the skills while verbalizing. Students would then try to execute one of the subskills after reading the next paragraph.
This approach can be generalized to other skills and I have often tried to explain how I would apply the approach in a classroom setting. What always came to mind was the teacher standing in front of a group of students with a computer, projector, and white board. Show a portion of content and apply the strategy.
I recently encountered an article from the Reading Teacher with very much the same idea, but executed in a different way. This article proposed that both teachers and students could apply this general strategy, but apply the strategy by making use of a screen capture video program. The author noted that students are spending more time learning from online resources and why not use this same content to develop cognitive skills taking advantage of the opportunity to record the screen and audio while working online.
In thinking about this approach, I can think of several benefits. First, students may not be teaching in face to face settings for a while. Recording such efforts would allow teacher and students to share their efforts to execute a specific skill. Second, use of this approach might be most effectively and efficiently applied with individual students taking advantage of recorded content.
White, A. (2016). Using digital think?alouds to build comprehension of online informational texts. The reading teacher, 69(4), 421-425.
