Teaching ELA to Multilingual Learners: Strategy of the Week

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Each week we share one strategy that you can use to meet the needs of your diverse multilingual learners in secondary content classes. This week’s reading and speaking strategy is specifically for secondary ELA teachers but could be adapted for use in many content areas.

Strategy Name: Reciprocal Teaching

Language Objective: I can discuss what I read so that my peers and I better understand a text.

Reciprocal Teaching: How-To

Before the Activity

1.  Choose a text for students to read and break it into chunks with stopping points marked.
2. Decide on student groups. Students should be in groups of 4 or 5.

During the Activity

1. Assign a role to each student.
2.  Students read a text to a stopping point, annotating according to their role.
3.  Students discuss the section they just read, using these roles:
   • The questioner asks about parts of the text that are unclear and makes connections to other concepts.
   • The clarifier shares answers to the questions and tries to make the content more clear.
   • The predictor states predictions about upcoming events or points the author might make.
   •  The summarizer highlights key ideas and details in the text.
4. After the discussion, students continue reading the text to the next stopping point, and then continue their discussion.

Extra Support for MLs

• Assign 2 students the same role in a group so they can help each other.
• Provide sentence frames for each part of the discussion.
• Bold key words and provide definitions to help students understand the text.

Example: Language Arts 7

LT: I can analyze the author’s use of connotation to describe experiences.

In Unit 3 of StudySync, students learn about connotation and denotation when reading the story “We Beat the Street.” During the first read portion of the lesson, have students reciprocal teaching to better understand the text. Then change the roles to include someone who looks for words with positive connotations for the close read.

Helpful Links to Learn More

• Reciprocal Teaching post on Reading Rockets which includes instructions, downloadable resources, and a video example 
• Reciprocal Teaching: Why, How, & Examples