Skip to main content

What is Socratic Seminar?

Socrates believed that wonder was the beginning of wisdom. He’s often known as the father of philosophy and his methodology entailed engaging his fellow citizens in philosophical conversation and asking probing questions of his students until his students experienced self-actualization. 


One of the convictions that he upheld was that human wisdom begins with the recognition of one’s own ignorance, as one of his famous quotations is, “The only wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” His process of teaching students by asking question after question is known as the Socratic Method. 



In 2013, I attended “What Up Socrates?” at the MATSOL conference, presented by Torii Bottomley, BSFS, MAT, of Boston Public Schools. Inspired by data-documented success she has seen with her ELLs on MCAS, my colleagues and I created a partnership with her and she coached us in integrating Socratic Seminars into our ELD 4 / 5 classes at Fuller Middle School. And it has been an integral component of my ESL instruction ever since. 


So what is it? Socratic Seminar is a discussion focused around one question. Students present their thesis, support it with  text-based evidence and provide an analysis. The group members take turns and use Talk Moves.  


The goal is for participants to come away with a deeper understanding of the text, based on active participation. 


It all starts with an anchor text. The teacher will read it out loud, students read it themselves, and then they mark up the text, looking closely at the language, themes, ideas, arguments, and so on. “Texts” can look very different. It could be a video, a song, a picture, an article, a poem, or anything that we can analyze and discuss. Students do a word study on $100 words and discuss the text together as a class. 


After reading the text, students look closely at vocabulary and  word study. They analyze the essential question, create a thesis (their answer to the question), and find evidence in the text to support our answers. After completing the note-taking guides, there is the Socratic Seminar. 


During the Socratic Seminar students are put into two circles.  The Inside Circle students have a discussion about the text and question, sharing their evidence and analysis using Academic Conversation Talk Moves, and $100 words. The Outside Circle students observe, listen, take notes, and offer feedback to the Inside Circle. Then the circles switch places. 


After reading and analyzing the text, completing our note-taking guide, and having a Socratic Seminar, students turn everything they have done into one, strong piece of writing. They write using academic language, incorporate evidence with citations, and provide thorough analysis. You will be expected to format your writing properly and check your grammar and spelling. 


And it WORKS. This process of teaching by using the Socratic Method not only teaches students to think critically, it provides all the scaffolding necessary for students to have success in writing, particularly English language students. 


Interested in learning more? Check out my Socratic Seminar Lesson Sequence Overview


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is 5 Little Monkeys Racist?

I’ve seen a lot of Tik Toks debunking children’s nursery rhymes lately. I have two toddlers, so now whenever I hear one of those rhymes, I think about their unsavory origins. But my son loves, loves Five Little Monkeys. He’s just learning to talk, and can almost say it by himself. I’ve thought about telling him to stop singing it since I learned in the original lyrics it’s not monkeys jumping on the bed, but he just gets so much joy from singing it as he jumps up and falls down, I thought... no harm, no foul, right? As long as he thinks the song is about monkeys, it’s ok.  Until my niece came over one day, and the three toddlers were playing on an old mattress we have on the living room floor for them to jump around on. My son asked me to sing 5 Little Monkeys. At first it was cute, because they literally were jumping on the bed, but then I took a good look at the three of them.  My kids are half-Guatemalan but very fair, like I am. Whereas my niece is half-black, and her skin happens
Post a Comment
Read more

Storytime Bilingüe featuring “Buenas Noches Luna”

This week's Storytime Bilingue features Buenas Noches Luna , the Spanish translation of the beloved children's book Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. We love the vivid language and images, and the black and white contrast pages are particularly compelling for the little ones whose eyesight is still developing. You'll see how much Mateo interacts with the book during this reading! This is a story I have nearly memorized, because I read it to Maya consistently before bed during our bedtime routine. We've read it so much, she practically has it memorized, too. Sometimes she likes me to read it aloud, and sometimes she likes to "read" the book by describing the images. I actually wrote about her as an emerging bilingual reader in my earlier blog post,  Today a Reader, Tomorrow a Leader , but the highlight of that post is that research shows repeated readings of the same book really benefit early literacy and vocabulary acquisition. For that reason I
Post a Comment
Read more

Why You Should Travel with Little Kids

I took my first cross-country road trip when I was six-weeks-old. My parents loaded me up in an old Ford Wagoneer and drove me home from my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, to my hometown of Ojai, CA. After that, we traveled back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast every summer of my life. A few times we flew, but most years we loaded up the car with the suitcases, the dogs, and the children and drove 3,000 miles across the country. This early exposure to travel instilled within me a joy of seeing the world, and since that first trip I have visited 34 states and 14 countries. And I hope to share that same joy with my own little ones. Traveling with children can be hard--it disrupts their nap schedules, may involve crossing timelines, and definitely pushes everyone beyond their comfort zones. But seeing different countries and different parts of our country as children gives them a greater appreciation for cultural and regional differences, and it widens their exper
10 comments
Read more