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

Dominant Participants in Seminar

I often get asked what to do about students who dominate the conversation. It's a double-edged sword at first. On the one hand, talkative students are at least talking. After all, the whole idea behind seminars is to pass responsibility over to the students. So dominant talkers can at first seem like a good thing. However, they need to be reined in fairly quickly because they are taking up conversation space. Many students need time and space to speak into. They often need dialogue to be slower and calmer. Talkative students will habitually take that space if we let them, to the point where they will talk for the sake of talking. Breakthrough ideas rarely come from the big talkers; they often come from the shy students, the thinkers, the ponderers. So we must make space for them. Besides, the big talkers need to work on their listening skills!

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

In the role of coach, make sure to intervene and provide reasons why students benefit from actively listening more. I always tell my students that if they walk into class with one idea about the text and then dominate the conversation without listening, they will leave the classroom with the same one idea. By actively listening, they will actually learn new ideas and viewpoints.

Don’t be afraid of limiting a student’s participation. One technique I like to use involves dice. Depending on the size of the group, I will give the talkative students a die with six, eight, or ten sides. They place the die on the highest number and use it to count down each time they participate. When they use their last number, they can’t speak any more. This technique works really well because the students end up self-monitoring and become more selective about what they share.

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Charles Ames Fischer

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Dominant Participants in Seminar

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Comment on this Bubble