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.

website

Author Insight

Finishing Quickly in Seminar

There are a lot of potential issues if a group "finishes" an opening question fairly quickly. The first is likely to do with inadequate preparation during the pre-seminar. In this stage, students must generate multiple talking points through annotating and generating questions. The next likely culprit, assuming the students are actually participating, is a lack of following-up questions. Socratic Seminar is meant to be an opportunity for deep conversation about complex issues, ideas, and values, and to get there requires a lot of follow-up questioning.

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Pursue thinking and justifications more, and use follow-up questions (role of bloodhound). go back and review the guidelines for a good opening question because a well-formed opening question should last a long time. Perhaps as a general rule, a good opening question, with pursuit and follow-up questions (both the role of bloodhound), can last about 7-10 minutes times the grade level. So, about 14-20 minutes in second grade, 35-50 minutes in fifth, and 60-90 minutes in ninth grade.

Here are some reliable follow-up questions:

• What in the text makes you say that? Where is that? Can you read it to the group?

• What is an example of that? What’s another example?

• Who can add to this? Can we broaden this idea?

• Could you summarize that in your own words?

• Who agrees/disagrees with that idea? Why?

• Could you paraphrase what he/she just said?

• Can you explain that further? Can we deepen this idea?

Buy

	Amazon
	Barnes&Noble
	Apple Books
	Kobo

Share
Follow Unfollow
Comment
x
Comment on this Bubble

Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.

Charles Ames Fischer

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Finishing Quickly in Seminar

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Comment on this Bubble