Do you want to create a supportive learning environment for struggling readers and extend the skills of confident readers? Reciprocal teaching is a student-led learning activity that empowers learners to take charge of their own learning. It is an excellent strategy to improve students’ comprehension and reading skills as well as their thinking skills. It encourages students to think about their own thought process during reading and helps them understand content better. It is also an ideal strategy to teach CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) to ESL and ELL students. Please read all the information in this link http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/reciprocal_teaching before you start using the role cards.

The activities in this pack have been designed to improve students’ confidence in writing, to enhance collaboration, critical and creative thinking skills, and to encourage independent thinking skills. Your students will have great fun while completing the activities in this pack. As a warm-up activity, students will be directed to a website where they will watch five short videos on different superheroes and do the gap-filling task about each video. They will then: • Complete a diagram, • Make a word cloud, • Write their own definition of a superhero, • Create their own superhero by using an avatar and write a descriptive paragraph about it, • Fill in a Venn diagram and write a compare-contrast paragraph, • Write a journal/blog entry based on a quote, • Work collaboratively to create a step-by-step “How to...” guide. The pack includes a PowerPoint, a rubric, self and peer assessment forms on writing a compare-contrast paragraph. It also includes a video for the students to watch before they start doing their final project. It requires group work so that the students can improve collaboration skills. There is a brief guide on how to collaborate effectively and why collaboration is an effective skill. There is also a teamwork rubric that evaluates each student’s performance as an effective team member. Since each group will prepare their projects in different formats, there is not a rubric for the guidebook. Instead, the students have been given links that will help them prepare their own rubric after they choose their medium for presentation and plan the project. If you think it is too hard for your students, you can prepare a rubric with them together in class to help them get involved in the learning process instead of giving them one prepared by you. Each activity in this pack is connected with the next one and they all prepare the students to complete the last activity, which is a collaborative project. This project requires the students to use tech in the classroom as they are asked to prepare a digital guidebook. Several links for the tools are available in the pack and the students are asked to choose the best medium to deliver their message in order to improve their digital fluency skills. One device per group will be enough to complete this project. If your students don’t have or aren’t allowed to use devices in the classroom, they can do the project with pen and paper. The warm-up activity, preparing a word cloud and creating an avatar for their superheroes also require the use of tech in the classroom and the students have been given the links for these activities, too. If your students don’t have or aren’t allowed to use devices in the classroom, they can do these with pen and paper as well or alternatively, you can assign them to do these tasks at home and bring them to school the next day.

Because growth mindset is a critical element of success in school, I strongly believe that it should be taught to students. This is the lesson I prepared for my students. If you have time, at the end of this lesson you can ask your students to prepare a leaflet or a video for younger students to teach them growth mindset. For more information on growth mindset, you can vist my Pinterest board. https://tr.pinterest.com/shine58/growth-mindset/

Because growth mindset is a critical element of success in school, I strongly believe that it should be taught to students. This is the lesson I prepared for my students. If you have time, at the end of this lesson you can ask your students to prepare a leaflet or a video for younger students to teach them growth mindset. For more information on growth mindset, you can vist my Pinterest board. https://tr.pinterest.com/shine58/growth-mindset/