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Charles Ames Fischer
a book bubble about
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
Education & Reference
Author Insight
Transition Language
There is a paradox in getting what you ask for from students. On the one hand, they can practice a skill such as asking questions. On the other hand, the questions they ask may have little to no bearing on the learning process. What I have found is that I must be clear with myself and the students about when we are practicing for practice's sake and when we are doing the real thing. In sports, this delineation is clear: practices, scrimmages, games, tournaments. In the classroom, less so, unless we make ourselves extremely clear on what we want and what we ask students to do. Shifting from practicing a skill into seminar can be chaotic and confusing for many students. So I often have to use transition language: "We have been practicing this as a skill, but now I am going to ask you to apply that to..." Even small reminders such as this can help students make easier transitions from practicing a skill to playing in “the game” of the seminar.
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
In my early days of facilitating, I tried out numerous ideas and found out the hard way what tends to work and what doesn’t. For example, I once wanted my students to get better at asking questions. I told the group that they were going to be graded exclusively on their questions. Well, I got what I asked for: numerous questions. One student managed to annotate 57 questions in pre-seminar. Although the students asked numerous questions during seminar, they neglected to follow through with any of them before asking more questions that were unrelated to previous ones. The conversation was stilted and lacked coherence and depth.
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