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 first one, how many students changed their minds, is a great test for a good seminar. Just think about how many things would have to happen for students to change their minds. They would need to listen carefully, consider new evidence, weigh it against the old evidence, and be open-minded enough to be willing to change their minds.
A quick way to gather this information is to have the students write their answers to the seminar question before and after the seminar.
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
There are two simple but reliable ways to tell if a seminar went well: the number of students who changed their minds, and how much conversation continued on after class.
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.