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The Power of the Socratic Seminar: Students Leading Each Other to Mastery | Katrina Boone

9/10/2015

3 Comments

 
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In my top left desk drawer, in hurried scrawl, a wrinkled index card reads: 

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

I wrote that quote down seven years ago, in my first months of teaching. I had come across it in planning a Socratic seminar for students, and I thought it would serve perfectly as a reminder of my true purpose in a classroom– lead learner, facilitator, but never, really, teacher. I never, though, led my students to have a Socratic seminar that year. Or any other year of my career. Until last week.
The excuses I’ve made to avoid planning Socratic seminars for my students are difficult to admit. Honestly, I thought they might pose a challenge too rigorous for students. I was afraid that discussions would fall apart without my guidance. I feared that my kids would fail, publicly, and I was terrified that they wouldn't recover from that.

The huge amount of planning and preparation for a Socratic seminar was another reason I avoided the strategy, but a wonderful colleague directed me to these resources on the Teaching Channel. Not only were the resources aligned to the Common Core State Standards (a label anyone can place on their lessons and resources), they were clearly designed around them. The standards for the lesson included:

  • Reading: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain. (R.11-12.1)
  • Speaking: Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue, resolving contradictions when possible. (SL. 11-12.1)
  • Listening: Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used. (SL.11-12.3)

Esther Wu’s resources erased my excuses about the overwhelming task of preparing a seminar for my students, and gave me the opportunity to overcome my other fears of failure. Examining the reading, speaking, and listening learning targets for the lesson forced me to see that the standards required much higher expectations than I dared hold my students. It was completely ridiculous for me to so ardently champion high standards for learning while simultaneously refusing to implement them in my classroom for fear of failure.

It was time for my first Socratic seminar.

I was nervous when I presented the expectations, norms, academic transitions, and roles for the seminar to my students. Although no one was outwardly excited about the prospect of sitting in concentric circles and talking about a text for 45 minutes, they didn’t complain either. I spent the first weeks of school setting a high standard for learning in my classroom, and although I thought this might push the limits of that standard too far, it didn’t.

I had spent previous lessons helping students ask questions about an author’s rhetorical choices in a text, and another lesson guiding them to thoroughly annotate texts, but for some reason, I doubted the scaffolding I’d provided and the data I’d culled from formative assessments. Of course my students were capable of having a Socratic seminar.

My students came to class prepared with discussion questions the next day, and they were ridiculously well-written. The students’ good questions sounded like ones I would ask. The best questions were ones I would have never thought of.

My most oppressive Socratic seminar fear was that kids would simply refuse to participate. A few did. One student, Alex, stands out in particular. When the discussion leader, Oliver, asked him to share his opening question, he quickly refused. “I don’t have any questions written down,” he claimed stubbornly. I could see his questions from where I was sitting, as could his peers, and my temptation to intervene was overwhelming.  “All right, Alex. Thanks for nothing,” Oliver transitioned, and proceeded by sharing one of his own questions. No one laughed. No one prodded Alex or complained. Later, after half-time (when students are coached by a peer on their performance during the first half of the seminar), Alex not only offered to share one of his core questions, but he also began making relevant and helpful contributions to the seminar.

During the discussion, students went beyond asking text-based questions; they challenged their
 peers’ reasoning. “Why did you think that?” they pushed. “How did you come to that conclusion?” “Where did you see that in the text?” They listened carefully and purposefully to each other. They agreed and disagreed with each other’s ideas without agreeing or disagreeing with each other. They discussed without debating. They fearlessly attacked the ambiguity in the text, freed from their hesitance to be wrong by the support of their peers.

Before the seminar, I thought that I would spend the time during the seminar either guiding the conversation, or maybe, if I was lucky, catching up on grading. I didn’t expect, though, to be so absolutely captivated by my students’ performance. I couldn’t stop watching them or thinking about how proud I was of their insight, their listening skills, and their ability to synthesize each other’s comments. They shared new ideas that they couldn’t have formed without benefiting from the discussion. It was beautiful. I was so fascinated that I almost missed the moment in the video below, in which my students effortless transition from discussing evidence in the text to making arguments about the author’s purpose.

The seminar didn’t end when class did; my students completed a self-assessment if they were speakers in the seminar, and peer assessments and listening evaluations if they were coaches or evaluators in the seminar. In their reflections, they had the opportunity to share new insights born of the discussion, to extend an idea they had shared, or to agree or disagree with an idea shared by a peer. The richness of the discussion combined with a bit of time and reflection drew out my student’s best ideas – honestly, some of the most insightful things I’ve ever had students write:
“I’ve always been a passive reader, just soaking up the text and hoping something happened to my brain to make me remember the plot or make me smarter. I hated the idea of the seminar at first, but during the discussion I was so happy. Now I realize that it was because I was actively participating in my own learning. I never really knew what teachers meant when they said they wanted me to be an active learner or active reader or active listener. The Socratic seminar made it so clear.”
The word educate comes from the Latin educere, which means “to lead forth or draw out.” I spent the last six years of my career trying to lead my students’ learning, to draw out the insights and ideas I was convinced lay dormant somewhere inside them. The power of the Socratic seminar lay in fact that the students led the learning, and they were empowered to draw out the potential of their peers and master the standards in the most dynamic, exciting, beautiful way I have been lucky enough to witness as a teacher.


Katrina Boone currently works in a hybrid role – spending half of her time in teaching English at Shelby County High School in Shelbyville, KY and working half-time as a Teacher Leader on Special Assignment with the Kentucky Department of Education. She is a co-editor of this website and editor of this blog. Follow Katrina @katrinaboone.
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Not Loving Our Students to Failure: Productive Struggle, Persistence at Work in the Elementary Social Studies Classroom | Tiffany Gruen

8/23/2015

1 Comment

 
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Imagine that you’re a fifth grade student. Your teacher asks you to read to her, timer in hand, every week…though she doesn’t do that with everyone. You like your teacher and your friends in your class, but you’re not a fan of being pulled to the back table for “extra help”. Your hands get a little clammy when the teacher excitedly tells the students that everyone is going to “popcorn read!” You feign excitement, but quietly pray that your friends know you well enough to not call on you…or at least not for the longer paragraphs. Social studies is the worst! Have you seen the words on those pages? Why did those old people have to talk and write so fancy?


“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In the past, I had been fearful to overwhelm my struggling fifth grade readers with the language of difficult, historical documents, particularly the preamble to the Constitution. I knew that fifth grade student who was reluctant to read, and I didn’t want to crush her. Instead, I spoon-fed her, and others like her, the information from a “trust me, you don’t have to read it directly, I’ll just tell you” perspective. I felt guilty for taking that stance, but justified the instructional decision I was making because the content was more approachable. The accomplished readers? I gave them full access to the text, allowing them to make their own meaning from the complex reading. One group of students received my “effective teaching” lesson plan, while the other set received my “I love you and don’t want to see you struggle” lesson plan. 

My love for my struggling readers set them up for failure, year after year. I had to change something about my approach. As I became more aware of and comfortable with the Common Core ELA standards, I began utilizing the practices within my social studies instruction. I chose one rich, rigorous text for all of my classes, regardless of their definitive reading levels. With insight from an instructional coach, I began pulling out the academic vocabulary that my students would face in historical texts. We analyzed the words and discovered the meanings together, rather than looking up in a dictionary or waiting to be told the definition. I noticed that when my students stopped relying solely on dictionaries, they became immersed in the power of language and how words are used in their context. I pulled away from leading the instruction and immersed myself into the role of facilitating instruction. The idea that some students could “get it”, while others would become frustrated quickly became an antiquated notion. I knew the process was working when one of my “low” readers took a “high” reader to task on some text-dependent questions tied to a slave narrative and schooled us all in placing our own interpretations on someone else’s historical truth. This student exchange is why I teach.  This exchange did not happen in my pre-CCSS classroom.

After a year of putting this instructional shift into practice, I became more comfortable with my role as a facilitator of learning. One year, my class consisted of 29 students from all walks of life. You could call some of those students spunky, some were shy and most were well below the grade level reading expectations. Sound familiar? 

Regardless of this group’s “lexile” levels, I had continued to use the ELA techniques of the previous year and it had become second nature for my students to work with the academic vocabulary and access the original, historical text. The dreaded preamble to Constitution was upon us, but I did not feel the least bit nervous. I knew these kiddos had the tools to overcome the text and truly find the value of its meaning. 

My assistant principal happened to stop in while we were discussing the purposes of government. Knowing this group’s reading ability, I could see that she was a bit skeptical that my kids could really access the Constitution text, much less understand it. So, she asked if there were any volunteer readers. Very loud hands shot up across the room, but I could see my AP focus in on a little girl, sitting in the front corner, quietly raising her hand. The AP called on her and Thalya quietly stood up and confidently read the preamble, without stumbling over a single word. The AP looked a little surprised, but followed up with “Yes, but what does it mean?” Hands shot up from around the room, but Thalya was not finished. She went through, line by line, purpose by purpose, giving a beautiful synopsis of what our government should provide to its citizens. The AP sat for a moment and then gushed over this little girl. I was unaware, but just two years prior, the only English that Thalya spoke was the word “hello” after much prompting and many weeks of tears. That fifth grade girl had overcome more than I could have ever imagined. 

The beauty of Thalya’s success was that it was not her defining moment. She knew she could read it, she knew that she could understand it. It was just the simple fact that now others outside of our classroom knew that she could read and understand it, as well. As beautiful as Thalya’s story is, my takeaway is that many hands shot up all around the room of students wanting to show our AP that they, too, could demonstrate understanding from this difficult text. Some students went as far as to stalk the AP in the hallway over the next couple of weeks, with the text tucked neatly in their pocket. 

The Common Core ELA standards require that ALL students engage in high level texts. They do not offer up excuses or point fingers at scapegoats. The standards are clear and simple. I once heard a presenter say that we often “love our children to failure” and I was so guilty of that prior to fully implementing the CC ELA standards in my social studies classroom. No one wants to see a child falter or fail. It’s in our blood as caretakers to make childhood a time of wonder and discovery, rather than frustration and disappointment. What the CC ELA standards made me aware of and what my students remind me daily, is that raising the bar for students doesn’t equal frustration and disappointment. Rather, the standards allow students to see the wonder of rich language and discover the meaning of deep topics. It gave that struggling fifth grade reader, and many others like her, the confidence and ability to overcome complex text and expand the world around her.

Tiffany Gruen is a fourth and fifth grade social studies teacher at John G. Carlisle Elementary in Covington, KY. She is a Hope Street Group Kentucky Teacher Fellow and a Core Advocate with Student Achievement Partners. Follow her @GruenTiff.

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Conquering Complex Texts | Joe Harris

8/17/2015

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“One question I would like the group to consider is…”

“I think the author’s tone comes through a little more by the end of the poem when she uses word choices like…” 

“If I consider this text from the perspective of…” 
These are all questions and pieces of discussions I’ve heard in my classroom over the past several years. Since implementing the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts in the Fall of 2010, my high school ELA classroom practices have shifted to include a stronger focus on close reading strategies. I learned early in the implementation process that in order for students to successfully master the ELA reading standards, they must be equipped with strategies and tools necessary to conquer complex texts throughout the year.

Take, for instance, Common Core’s first reading anchor standard, which asks students to read a complex text and to cite textual evidence to support ideas from the text and inferences drawn from it. Several skills are packed into this standard -- determining explicit information, making inferences, citing textual evidence -- all of which students need in order to be successful in reading and responding to texts.  To master this standard, students need to “read closely,” or what I call “dissect” a text. They need pull out the explicit details and make logical inferences from them.

Approaching R1 in Mr. Harris’ Class

 
1: I model how to annotate the text by underlining key details, circling confusing aspects, etc.

2: Students work with a partner or small group to clarify confusing aspects of the text.

3: Groups share out confusing aspects with the class, and I introduce different strategies to tackle and clarify these parts. 

4: I model how to answer a text-dependent question using textual evidence.

5: Students answer text-dependent questions. Sometimes they answer these as a group and chart their answers, and other times they create a visual representation to share with the class. Other times, they independently answer the questions. Also, students will eventually write their own text-dependent questions to use in group discussion.

A few semesters ago, one of my former students visited my classroom. He was a graduate who returned to speak to my 11th grade classes about preparing for college. He spoke about how he came into my classroom as a struggling reader, but “learned how to break down a hard reading into something I can understand,” and how he still uses those strategies in college. Not only did his story encourage my students that year to really delve into close reading, but it reassured me that the instructional shifts I’ve made as a result of Common Core implementation are necessary. Likewise, the questions and rich discussions I hear on a day-to-day basis speak to the power of this shift
.

Joe Harris teaches AP Language and chairs the English Department at Lawrence County High School in Louisa, KY. He is also a Teacher Leader on Special Assignment for the Kentucky Department of Education, and served as a 2013-2015 Hope Street Group Kentucky Teacher Fellow.

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