All Aboard! Welcome to Collaboration Station

According to Cornell University's Center for Teaching Excellence, "collaborative learning is based on the view that knowledge is a social construct." In other words, students acquire new knowledge through interaction with their peers. Each person carries his or her own set of unique experiences, which directly influences his or her perspectives about anything and everything. H. Jackson Brown's famous quote - "Everyone you meet knows something you don't; learn from them" - rings especially true in terms of collaborative learning. Students gain deeper insights from discussions with peers. All types of collaborative learning share four main principles: "(1) The learner or the student is the primary focus of instruction, (2) Interaction and 'doing' are of primary importance, (3) Working in groups is an important mode of learning, and (4) Structured approaches to developing solutions to real-world problems should be incorporated into learning" ("Collaborative Learning: Group Work"). Two types of collaborative learning, reciprocal teaching and literature circles, fit this mold.


Reciprocal teaching is primarily dialogue-based, meaning it is a talk-based approach, that is characterized by four strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and connecting. In the beginning stages of reciprocal teaching, a teacher sits with a small group of students, who all have the same book/passage in hand. The teacher first acts as a model, showing the students in the group how to properly summarize the text or segment of text, ask questions about the text, clarify anything confusing, and making connections/predictions. Then, she passes on the role of teaching to the students. Once the students have mastered the art of teaching, the teacher is no longer needed in the group, and the students lead their own discussion. Research has shown that this method is beneficial, especially for students who really struggle with reading.

In one study by Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann L. Brown, twenty four seventh grade students were chosen to be subjects. Six of these students, who were chosen based on standardized test scores and results of the researchers' test, received instruction through reciprocal teaching. These students improved dramatically in areas such as asking main ideas questions, eliminating use of detail summaries, and providing main ideas summaries. Additionally, the comprehension of these students increased by 30%-40% in just a couple of weeks! (Brown and Palincsar, "Reciprocal Teaching and Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities"). Collaborative learning in the form of reciprocal teaching really is effective, but problems are not inevitable.

It is essential that the teacher spend enough time in the group discussions before sending the students off to discuss on their own. Teachers need to appropriately model each of the four strategies, and then scaffold instruction accordingly, eventually providing no assistance whatsoever. Failure to proceed in this way and in too short a time frame can create ineffective student-led groups, in which predictions are made with no evidence from the text and insignificant questions are asked. Reciprocal teaching that results in these types of student-led discussions will not show student improvement.

The idea to create and implement literature circles into reading instruction stemmed from reciprocal teaching. In literature circles, small groups of students meet to discuss a certain text/passage, and each student in the group has a specific role. Some of these roles include discussion director, character analyzer, artist/visualizer, summarizer, and word finder/clarifier. Just like with reciprocal teaching, the teacher needs to model all of these roles before the students take on the responsibilities themselves. Additionally, the teacher needs to set expectations for how interaction between group members should occur. According to "Help! What Is Wrong With These Literature Circles and How Can We Fix Them," a main goal of literature circles is to "promote trust and respect for multiple voices and opinions" (21). Without these expectations, literature circles could soon become chaotic and out of control, as students may begin to disrespect their peers and never be able to get back on track. However, when students act appropriately, their reading comprehension and responses to text improve.

While I am still learning about and developing my thoughts on collaborative learning, research shows that both reciprocal teaching and literature circles can be beneficial to students. These teaching methods prove to be most effective when used with struggling readers because the strategies both types of collaborative learning emphasize have already been mastered by more proficient readers. However, it wouldn't hurt the higher-level reading students to participate in these activities. As someone who hopes to one day be a teacher in a low-income school, I will have an abundance of low-level readers in my class. Therefore, it will be extremely important for me to allocate time for collaborative learning in my classroom. Nonetheless, whether you are a teacher in an urban school or not, I encourage you to incorporate collaborative learning into your reading instruction. All classes will contain some low-level readers, who will benefit greatly from this kind of teaching. I hope you come to Collaboration Station with me!