Description and Application of Reciprocal Teaching: A Cooperative Learning Procedure for the Judaic Classroom

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices. Accordingly our mentees should know about the Cooperative Learning Model of Teaching.

One example of a cooperative learning procedure for the Judaic classroom is Reciprocal Teaching. A description of this cooperative procedure and a sample application for the Judaic classroom follows:

Reciprocal Teaching (*Palinscar and Brown, 1984): This is an excellent reading comprehension and discussion cooperative procedure. Students form learning pairs and do the following:

· silently read the same passage at the same time

· together, verbally summarize the reading.

· ask each other questions about the reading.

· clarify and explain what the reading means.

· predict the contents of the next passage.

Sample Application: Read a passage from any of the Five Books of Moses and follow the procedure of reciprocal teaching.

* Palinscar, A.S., and Brown, A.L. (1984). Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-fostering and Comprehension-monitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175.

On the next post we will describe and give a sample application of another cooperative learning procedure, Simple Jigsaw.