The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Education & Reference

synopsis

Synopsis

Do You Have 21st-Century Skills to Help Your Students Succeed? Do Your Students Have 21st-Century Skills to Think for Themselves? The Power of the Socratic Classroom has the answers you are looking for—answers that will supply the strategies to show students how to succeed into the future. A future that has unknown products, unidentified jobs, and unanticipated challenges. In Socratic Seminar, teachers shift to the role of facilitator, where they help their students develop the collaborative interpersonal skills, the critical and creative thinking skills, and the speaking and listening skills to face the upcoming challenges of the 21st century.

bio

Author Biography

Charles Fischer has taught in public and private schools in a variety of settings, from rural Maine to inner city Atlanta. In the past 20 years, he has worked with a wide range of students from 4th grade to AP English and has been nominated for Teacher of the Year four times. He has his Master’s degree in Teaching & Learning from the University of Southern Maine, and received his B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. His latest book, The Power of the Socratic Classroom, has won four awards, including the NIEA Best Education Book. His first novel, Beyond Infinity, won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award bronze medal (YA fiction). His areas of expertise are Socratic Seminar, Active Listening, Inquiry, Teaching & Learning, and Critical & Creative Thinking. He is currently working on a book of poetry, a short story collection, and several novels.

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Author Insight

Grading Annotations

Anchor papers are the single best way to clarify for students what is expected of them in the pre-seminar stage. Without properly preparing the text for dialogue, there will rarely be quality conversations. Students need numerous talking points in order to navigate complex texts and negotiate meaning together.

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Because annotations form the foundation of pre-seminar, teachers must have effective ways to assess and grade the students. I have tried many things over the years and nothing is as powerful as using anchor papers. Even after being thoroughly taught about something as complex as annotating, students can easily lose sight of exactly what quality work is (and is not). The line between what constitutes an A and a C grade can be remarkably unclear to many students.

Anchor papers clarify not only how the teacher perceives the grading scale for the assignment, but they also help students understand what to do in order to improve. After teaching my students how to annotate and giving them a few seminars to practice, I create several fictitious anchor papers that roughly range in my grading scale from A to F and then copy them onto colored paper. See the examples in the appendices.

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Charles Ames Fischer

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Grading Annotations

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Comment on this Bubble