Building Classroom Reading Communities : Retrospective Miscue Analysis and Socratic Circles

The authors show teachers how to combine retrospective analysis of miscues (RMA) with Socratic Circles to develop studentsÆ literacy. In RMA, teachers help students identify reading errors or ômiscuesö and organize students into small reading groups to discuss what might have occurred in their thinking to have caused them to omit, substitute, or insert words. Socratic Circles are a classroom management and learning strategy whereby students observe and listen to small group discussions such as reading conversations and then comment on the value of what they heard or observed. In combining these two strategies, the authors demonstrate the importance of interactive reader response as a means for developing critical literacy and critical inquiry in the reading curriculum and beyond.