Reciprocal teaching is an instructional activity that involves a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text for the purpose of constructing the meaning of text. It is a reading technique that promotes students reading comprehension by providing them with four specific reading strategies that are actively and consciously used to support comprehension: Questioning, Clarifying, Summarizing, and Predicting. The concept of reciprocal teaching was first developed by Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann L. Brown in 1984 as a technique to help teachers bridge the gap for students who demonstrated a discrepancy between decoding skills and comprehension skills.

Reciprocal teaching follows a very scaffolded curve, beginning with high levels of teacher instruction, modeling, and input, which is gradually withdrawn to the point that students are able to use the strategies independently. The four strategies used in reciprocal teaching are summarizing, questioning, predicting, and clarifying. Before reciprocal teaching can be used successfully by students, they need to have been taught and had time to practice these four strategies.

Reciprocal teaching is a contemporary application of Vygotskys theories and is used to encourage self-regulation and self-monitoring and promote intentional learning. It is a powerful instructional practice in terms of achievement outcomes for students with disabilities due to its combination of strategy and direct instruction methods. Reciprocal teaching can be successfully implemented within both general education and special education classrooms.