Teaching Reading and Writing to Struggling Middle School and High School Students: The Case for Reciprocal Teaching

Struggling middle school and high school readers and writers are not receiving the instruction they need to reach our nation's goal of high literacy for all students. The authors provide background on the importance of cognitive strategy instruction with its emphasis on teachers' using empirically validated learning strategies to help struggling learners become more strategic. They then move to a discussion of reciprocal teaching as an optimal choice for teaching both reading and writing because of its emphasis on teaching learners how to ask questions, clarify issues, summarize text, and predict future text content.