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.
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.
Many people ask what exactly a Socratic Seminar really is. To me, the question is huge and nuanced, but a simple answer is that a Socratic Seminar is basically a discussion where the students take ownership. The teacher gradually releases responsibility to to the students so that they can become more self-sufficient.
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
Socratic Seminar is a structured classroom practice and philosophy that promotes critical and creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, collaboration, and scholarly habits of mind. The main goal of Socratic Seminar is to build deep conceptual understandings of texts and ideas, where the word “text” is used loosely to refer to a piece of writing, visual art, music, or movement. In seminars, the teacher shifts his or her role to that of facilitator or questioner, so that the students can move from passively receiving knowledge to actively constructing meaning and understanding. They build on others’ ideas, cite the text, ask questions and voice their own opinions. With consistent practice, the students become self-sufficient but together they can tackle even the most challenging texts.
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.