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This was my first Socratic seminar with this class.
We have done a philosophical chairs previously.
And it was a culmination project from reading a novel.
So all of the students read the novel in class and they were
expected to be able to talk about the novel as if they really
knew the characters, knew the story and the plot. So number
one and this is the most important. A Socratic seminar is not a debate.
So you will be discussing with other people but you’re not
trying to prove them wrong. Because I’ve had a number of
years as an AVID teacher I’m very familiar with using
Socratic seminars and I firmly believe that the Socratic seminar
leads the kids to the higher-level skills that we’re looking for,
particularly for 21st century learning. OK, do you have your notes out?
OK, Linda, for the first question why don’t you stand up? So our first
question for the Socratic seminar is would you have felt
comfortable or uncomfortable about how Winnie was treated in
general in the story by her parents? So the kids are able to
discuss as if they are adults. They’re able to listen to other
people’s ideas. They’re not necessarily just arguing with each
other and fighting for their idea. The idea is to expand their
knowledge by listening to others and hearing what other
people’s ideas are. It’s a very high level activity but the sixth
graders did great with it. They really picked it up and ran with it.
And I think it’s nice that for sixth graders to get that training,
they’ll have that as they go on through their high school years.
And the ability to do something that most people only do in
college classes, already in sixth grade, gives them skills
beyond their years right now.
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