Engaging the Text: Reciprocal Teaching and Questioning Strategies in a Scaffolded Learning Environment

In the area of reading comprehension, students with learning disabilities and their teachers have one thing in common: while they have both learned effective strategies, they may be unable to bring these strategies into play. For students with learning disabilities, the process of decoding words requires so much effort that they are often unable to approach text strategically to construct its meaning, in spite of having been taught helpful strategies. Likewise, many teachers are acquainted with labor-intensive strategies that have been shown to be successful in helping students, but they simply do not have the time or resources to implement these strategies consistently.

This three-year directed research project (1998-2001) investigated whether there are better classroom tools available to support students with learning disabilities in becoming strategic readers. By combining promising strategies with supportive technologies not usually found in classrooms, CAST was able to assess whether this combination creates a better environment for both teaching and learning.

The Project

Working with students in grades 6-8, the project combined the Reciprocal Teaching Method (RTM), developed by Palincsar and Brown and others over the last two decades, the text-to-speech capacity of the CAST eReader™ software tool, and voice recognition technology to create a new instructional approach for students with learning disabilities.

As one of the most promising instructional methods in the area of reading comprehension, RTM takes the form of a dialogue between teacher and student about the text being read using four key strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. These strategies are modeled by the teacher, and then practiced by the students as each takes a turn leading the dialogue. Research shows that this technique works, but it requires a great deal of a highly trained teacher's time. CAST addressed this drawback by adding computer-based supports to the teacher-student collaboration.

• Design an instructional technique, using formative evaluation methods, that weds the research-validated Reciprocal Teaching Method with the computer's unique capacity to provide timely student prompts and scaffold weaknesses;
• Investigate the capability of this new technique to improve the ability of learning disabled students in grades 6-8 to actively engage text, use questioning strategies, and develop their reading comprehension;
• Disseminate the results of this research to teachers, students, and other stakeholders in education to ensure that cutting-edge information about reading comprehension strategies is available and used.

Activities

In the final year of the project, CAST conducting a quasi-experimental study to assess the impact of computer versus non-computer supported strategy instruction on the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities. Eleven resource room teachers, 3 inclusion teachers, and 150 students in grades 6-8 participated in the study. Half of the students engaged in traditional RTM strategy instruction as they read and respond to print versions of award-winning novels, such as Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins. The other half read digitized versions of the novels with embedded reading strategy supports.

Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to determine whether the addition of the computer tools to the reciprocal teaching methodology resulted in differences in the ability of students to develop comprehension skills and increase their motivation and self-concept as readers. CAST is disseminating research results at professional conferences in reading and educational research, as well as in professional journals for teachers. Findings will be published when available, with drafts of guidelines for educators and others, on the CAST website.

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the U.S. Department of Education, Award No. H324D980051. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.