Reciprocal reading is a structured method of guided reading for small groups. It is an instructional activity that takes the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text for the purpose of constructing the meaning of text. The reciprocal approach provides students with four specific reading strategies that are actively and consciously used to support comprehension: questioning, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting. Reciprocal reading encourages students to think about their own thought process during reading, learn to be actively involved and monitor their comprehension as they read, ask questions during reading, and make the text more comprehensible.

Before reciprocal teaching can be used successfully by students, they need to have been taught and had time to practice the four strategies that are used in reciprocal teaching. Each student is assigned a specific role within the group before reading, and when a students colored icon appears on a page, that student leads the discussion using the prompts on that page. Reciprocal teaching has been shown to increase both reading and listening comprehension and has demonstrated that students transfer the learning into other contexts.

Reciprocal reading is an amalgamation of reading strategies that effective readers are thought to use. It is aimed at aiding students who possess grade-level skills in letter-sound correspondence but are unable to construct meaning from the texts they decode. Reciprocal teaching utilizes the strategy of prediction, whereby students predict before reading, and then use those predictions during reading to check if they are correct.

Reciprocal reading is effective in helping students improve their reading ability in pre-post trials. It has been used widely in English-speaking countries, but is less common in the UK.