Reciprocal Teaching: Four O'Clock
	Passage One and Passage Two
Procedures	Read Passage One below to students. Remind students to highlight any word or idea that they do not understand. The hands of the alarm clock on the table in front of Mr. Crangle stood at 3:47, on a summer afternoon. "You're wrong about that, you know," he said, not taking his eyes from the face of the clock. "You're quite wrong, Pet, as I have explained to you often enough before. The moral angle presents no difficulties at all." The parrot, in the cage hanging above him, cocked her head and looked down with a hard, cold, reptilian eye, an ancient eye, an eye older by age upon age than the human race. She said, "Nut." Review the Reciprocal Teaching strategies and use the questions below to "model" the strategies: Clarifying: What does "moral angle" mean? What is a "cold, reptilian eye"? What does all the description of the eye mean? Visualizing: What image comes to your mind as you hear this being read? Questioning: Teacher-Like Questions: Who is this story about? What do we know about him? Summarizing: What is the main idea of this passage? What is it mostly about? How do you know that? Predicting: What do you think the next part will be about? Repeat the above process using Passage Two below. Mr. Crangle, his eye still on the clock, took a peanut from a cracker bowl at his elbow and held it above his head, to the bars of the cage. Pet clutched it in a leathery claw. The spring-steel muscles opened the horny beak. She clinched the peanut and crushed it, the sound mingling in the furnished room with the big-city sounds coming through the open window--cars honking, feet on the sidewalk, children calling to each other, aplane overhead like a contented industrious bee. Clarifying: Are there any words or ideas you don't understand in this passage? Visualizing: Tell me what images and sounds came to your mind as I read this paragraph. Questioning: Why is Mr. Crangle looking at the clock? Where do you think Mr. Crangle lives? What other questions might you ask? Summarizing: What is the main idea of this paragraph? This part tells about Mr. Crangle feeding and talking to his parrot in an apartment in a city. Predicting: Who has Predicting Card #1? What do you think the author may tell us in the next paragraph?
Four O'Clock Lesson