According to Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), a novice is guided by an expert to solve a problem or to achieve a goal beyond his actual developmental level in the process of scaffolding. In reciprocal teaching, scaffolding is used in the context of group discussion as a method to support and guide students in the zone of proximal development (Paris & Winograd, 1990). After learning the four reading strategies, students started to take more responsibility to complete the following tasks. With teacher’s guidance, they learned to practice the four strategies in the second stage, Teacher-led discussion.
Teacher-led discussion contained four sessions, Session 3 to Session 6. Only one target strategy was covered in each session. The teacher started a session with a brief review of the target strategy. After the review, the teacher led the students to read the first paragraph of the article using the target strategy and invited them to practice it with the remaining paragraphs. Meanwhile, the students took time observing the reasoning process of an experienced reader or their capable peers. They were also encouraged to apply the strategies. Lesson plans of these four sessions are provided in Appendix D.
In order to reduce students’ anxiety with speaking in English and to make them feel free to express their ideas, students were allowed to speak in Chinese in Stage Two and Stage Three. However, speaking in English during the discussion was also encouraged. If some students talked in English, they might make progress in not only the reading comprehension but also the other three skills. Besides, to keep track of the learning process, students were asked to complete worksheets for each session. In terms of predicting and clarifying, they could write in Chinese. As for summarizing and questioning, they should finish these sections in English.
In Session 3, the strategy of predicting was practiced. In the beginning, the instructor reviewed the definition of predicting and demonstrated when and how to use it with the title of Article 2. Then, the teacher asked for volunteers to make predictions about the first paragraph. Next, both the teacher and other students gave comments on the predictions. If they didn’t think the prediction is correct, they could revise it. After everyone expressed their opinions, the teacher guided students to read the first paragraph aloud to check the prediction. The same steps were repeated until they finished the last paragraph. In the last five minutes, the teacher wrapped up the session by either reviewing the target strategy or inviting students to share their feedbacks about the strategy.
In Session 4, the strategy of clarifying was included. After reviewing the definition of clarifying, the teacher showed the students when and how to use it by clarifying the new word in the title. Next, the teacher asked students to read the first paragraph with clarifying strategy by themselves. Then, the teacher asked for volunteers to share the problems they encountered while reading and how to solve them. The teacher praised the volunteers when they got the correct answers. On the other hand, she provided guidance when the clarification went wrong. The same steps were repeated for the next two paragraphs. To wrap up this session, the teacher invited one or two students to make a summary of what they had learned that day. This
summarizing technique would be related to the target strategy in the next session.
In Session 5, the teacher first reminded the students with what they did in the end of the previous session, i.e. making a summary. After giving a brief review of summarizing, she talked about the ideas of a topic sentence and supporting details.
This would help the students to tell the major idea from the minor ones. Then, she guided students to read the first paragraph of Article 4 and demonstrated how to summarize it. Next, all of the students read the second paragraph aloud, and some of them were chosen to share their summaries with the class. The teacher and students discussed which summary best captured the gist of the article. Some feedbacks were given both by the teacher and by their peers. The same steps were repeated for the last paragraph. Because clarifying strategy were more complex than the previous ones, the teacher ended this session with a review of what were covered that day.
In Session 6, after reviewing the definition of good and bad questions, the teacher guided the students to read the first paragraph together and demonstrated to generate two fat (good) questions and two thin (bad) ones. Next, the teacher invited students to discuss the difference between the two kinds of questions. Then, she classified questions into four categories and offered examples for students to imitate
later. After that, the students read the second paragraph and shared their own
questions with the class. The peers could provide comments to modify the questions.
The same steps were repeated for the remaining paragraphs until they finished reading.
During the four sessions, the time for teacher guidance was reduced as the students took more and more responsibility for reciprocal teaching.