Reciprocal teaching, QAR and SQ3R for students with IEPs

By the IEP Atlas editorial teamLast updated November 1, 2026

Short answer

Reciprocal teaching is a small group routine where students take turns leading four roles: predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarizing. For students with IEPs, teach each role on its own first, use role cards with sentence starters, keep texts at a readable level and fade the teacher's lead over 6 to 10 weeks. QAR and SQ3R fit alongside it.

Reciprocal teaching, QAR and SQ3R are three of the best-known named comprehension routines. All three package several strategies into one structure students can repeat. That structure is their value for students with IEPs, who often learn strategies one at a time and never combine them. It is also their risk: run without explicit teaching, they turn into worksheets.

This page covers how to teach each routine, how to adapt it, and how to measure it. The worked example follows one fictional group of four 6th graders. Numbers are illustrations. For the individual strategies inside these routines, see the cluster pillar on reading comprehension strategies.

The three routines at a glance

Routine	What students do	Best for	Main strategies inside
Reciprocal teaching	Take turns leading 4 roles while reading a text in sections	Small groups, any text type, grades 3 and up	Predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing
QAR (question-answer relationships)	Sort questions by where the answer comes from	Answering questions, test passages	Locating answers, inference
SQ3R	Survey, question, read, recite, review a textbook section	Content-area textbooks, grades 5 and up	Previewing, questioning, summarizing

The National Reading Panel found that teaching several comprehension strategies together improved comprehension, and it described reciprocal teaching as an example of this multiple-strategy approach.^[1] The What Works Clearinghouse adolescent literacy guide recommends direct and explicit strategy instruction and extended discussion of text.^[2] Reciprocal teaching does both.

What you need before you start

Texts at an accessible level, about 95% word accuracy, divided into 4 to 6 short sections.
Role cards with the job and 2 or 3 sentence starters each.
A group of 3 to 5 students. Larger groups give each student too few turns.
A role rubric for each student, scored during the session (see the measurement section).

Step-by-step: teaching reciprocal teaching

Step 1: Teach each role on its own

Spend 1 to 2 weeks on each role before combining them. Students with IEPs usually need more time on clarifying and summarizing than on predicting.

Predictor: "I think the next part will tell us ... because ..." See making predictions IEP goals.
Questioner: "Why did ...? What does the author mean by ...?" See the self-questioning strategy.
Clarifier: "I didn't understand the word or part ... To fix it, I ..." See fix-up strategies.
Summarizer: "This part was mostly about ... The most important thing was ..."

Step 2: Model all four roles in one session

Read a section aloud and lead all four roles yourself, naming each one. Then ask the group to rate your summary: "Did I say the most important thing? Did I leave out small details?"

Step 3: Hand out the roles with you as backup

Assign one role per student. After each section, students run their role while you prompt. Rotate roles each section or each session so every student practices all four.

Step 4: Fade your lead

Over 6 to 10 weeks, move from prompting every turn, to prompting only when stuck, to watching and scoring. By the end, a student acts as the group leader and calls on each role.

Step 5: Move to class texts

Once the group runs the routine without you, use it with science or social studies sections. Transfer to class texts is what matters for the IEP.

Adding QAR

QAR sorts questions into four types by where the answer lives:

Type	Where the answer is	Example question
Right There	Stated in one place in the text	What year did the bridge open?
Think and Search	In the text, but in more than one place	What two problems slowed the builders?
Author and Me	Not stated; combine text clues and what you know	Why might the workers have felt proud?
On My Own	From the reader's own knowledge	Have you ever crossed a long bridge? What was it like?

QAR fits inside reciprocal teaching: the questioner labels each question's type. It also helps with test passages. For a fuller breakdown of question types, see types of comprehension questions. The template to sort in the book or in my head questions has goal wording.

Adding SQ3R for textbooks

SQ3R is a study routine for one textbook section:

Survey: look at the title, headings, visuals and summary. See previewing text.
Question: turn each heading into a question.
Read: read one section to answer its question.
Recite: say or write the answer without looking.
Review: at the end, answer all the questions and fix any you missed.

For students with IEPs, give a two-column notes page (questions on the left, answers on the right) and shorten the section. The template for SQ3R notes on a textbook section fits.

Worked example: one group across 10 weeks

Group (fictional): Four 6th graders reading grade 4 text with 95% to 98% accuracy, in a 30-minute intervention block, 4 days a week. The tracked student is Dev, whose IEP goal covers the routine.

Baseline, February 2 to 13. Before instruction, each student was asked to do each role once on a grade 4 article. Dev scored 2, 3 and 2 of 8 rubric points (4 roles, 2 points each). Median 2 of 8.

Goal. During small group reading of an unpracticed grade 4 informational text, Dev will carry out each reciprocal teaching role when it is his turn, scoring at least 6 of 8 rubric points across the four roles on 3 consecutive weekly probes. See the template to carry out reciprocal teaching roles in a group.

Instruction. Weeks 1 to 4: one role per week taught alone. Week 5: modeling of all four. Weeks 6 to 8: rotating roles with prompts. Weeks 9 and 10: teacher watches and scores.

How to measure reciprocal teaching

Use rubric scoring. Score each role 0 to 2 once per weekly probe:

Score	Predict	Question	Clarify	Summarize
2	Fits and gives a clue	Text answers it; needs more than one word	Names a real confusion and fixes it	Main point in own words, no small details
1	Fits, no clue	Answerable but trivial	Names a confusion, no fix	Includes main point plus many details
0	Does not fit or none	Off-topic or none	None or "everything is fine" when it is not	Retells or copies

A filled-in data sheet

Dev's weekly probes recorded on the rubric scoring data sheet:

Week	Predict	Question	Clarify	Summarize	Total (of 8)	Support
Baseline	1	1	0	0	2	None
4	2	1	1	0	4	Role taught alone
6	2	2	1	1	6	Prompts
7	2	1	1	1	5	Prompts
8	2	2	1	2	7	Prompts fading
9	2	2	2	1	7	Teacher scores only
10	2	2	1	2	7	Teacher scores only

Dev met the criterion in weeks 8, 9 and 10. Clarifying stayed his weakest role, so it became the focus of his next goal.

Common mistakes

Weak: Handing out all four role cards on day one. Better: Teach each role alone first, for 1 to 2 weeks.
Weak: Texts at grade level that the group cannot decode. Better: Use accessible text in intervention, and read class texts aloud when moving to transfer.
Weak: Clarifiers who always say "I understood everything." Better: Require at least one word or phrase to clarify per section, and model honest confusion.
Weak: QAR taught as labels only. Better: Use the labels to decide where to look for the answer.
Weak: A goal that says "will participate in reciprocal teaching." Better: Name the text, the roles and a rubric criterion, as in Dev's goal.

For more goal wording, see the comprehension goals page and the reading comprehension strategies goal hub. Students who need vocabulary support during clarifying can use the routines in academic vocabulary and teaching root words. Paste a draft goal into the goal checker before the meeting.

Frequently asked questions

What are the four roles in reciprocal teaching?

Predictor, questioner, clarifier and summarizer. Students take turns leading each role after reading a section of text, and the teacher's lead fades as students take over the discussion.

Does reciprocal teaching work for students with learning disabilities?

It can, with changes: teach each role alone first, use role cards with sentence starters, keep texts at a readable level and give more time before fading support. Measure each student's roles so you can see who needs more teaching.

Should I use reciprocal teaching, QAR or SQ3R?

Use reciprocal teaching for group discussion of any text, QAR when the student needs help finding where answers come from, and SQ3R for independent textbook study. Many teachers combine them, such as labeling question types inside reciprocal teaching.

Use it in IEP Atlas

Sources

Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices, What Works Clearinghouse, Institute of Education Sciences

Written and checked by the IEP Atlas editorial team under our editorial policy. This guide describes general practice and federal rules. It is not legal advice; your state may add requirements, and the IEP team makes the decisions for each student.