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.
The most genuine way to "talk aloud" through a text is to read and annotate a brand new text. Have a colleague choose a text for you to work through for the first time in front of your students. This will actually simulate their reading experiences, which are almost always based in first readings. Modeling like this takes some bravery, but it is totally worth the effort!
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
The students will get better with modeling from an experienced teacher. When reading and preparing a text, make sure to speak aloud your own wonderings and ideas. Pause and have the students annotate your thoughts to start practicing. Periodically, have the students think-pair-share or think-draw-share so that they can also jot down thoughts and questions from each other. Remember, they need to practice, even if the annotations aren’t their own yet.
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