Increasing Student Talk - Part 4: Socratic Seminar (with guest blogger Heidi K)

I have been focusing many of my blog posts this year around how to increase the quality of student talk in your classroom.  One such strategy to use is a socratic seminar.  I am by no means an expert at running socratic seminars myself but we have some teachers in our building who are.  I asked one of those teachers, Heidi K, to do a guest post on socratic seminars.  

Enjoy!

I love Socratic Seminars! It is one of the only times during the year where students take 100% control of the class that day. Usually, lessons tend to be somewhere around 70/30, but Socratic Seminars are 100% student-led. In my classroom, we do Socratic Seminars at three points during the year. Each one builds on the skills learned from the previous one:

• First Socratic Seminar: Students focus primarily on asking and answering high-level questions. Before the seminar, we spend time talking about the difference between low-level questions and high-level questions and students practice creating those high-level questions (see the link at the bottom for the resources I use).
• Second Socratic Seminar: Students continue to focus on asking and answering high-level questions but also focus on using textual evidence to support their responses. Before the seminar, we spend time talking about close reading  and finding the best evidence from a text to support their opinions and responses. 
• Third Socratic Seminar: Students continue to focus on asking and answering high-level questions and using textual evidence but also focus on making meaningful text connections that strengthen their discussions even more (see the link at the bottom for examples). 

Doing a Socratic Seminar for the first time can be overwhelming for both the students and teacher. It takes a lot of patience for a teacher to give up control to the students. And, it takes a while for the students to feel comfortable running things themselves. But, I found it to be very worthwhile when they do. Here is a brief overview of how my seminars run on the day, and you can find more detailed information in the link at the bottom:

• First, students sit in either the inner circle or outer circle of desks. The inner circle (the ones actually discussing out loud) get out their books, notes, and other materials. The outer circle (the ones participating in an online backchannel) get logged in to the backchannel that I use most often (todaysmeet.com). 
• While students are given a couple minutes to look over their notes and prepare, I get my rubrics and score sheets ready to go. I also remind the outer circle what they should be chatting about in the backchannel (what the inner circle is doing well, what advice they have for them, and whether they agree or disagree with the topics brought up in the discussion).
• After that, I sit back and just listen. The students run the discussion, and I take notes on my scoresheets to make sure students get the grades they deserve. At a couple points in the hour, we will take a quick break so the inner circle can turn to the outer circle and get advice or suggestions from them (based on what was discussed in the backchannel).
• The next day, the inner circle and outer circles switch.

For a much more detailed description of how I run my Socratic Seminars (and links to all of my resources and other materials), please CLICK HERE. And, feel free to let me know if any of you have any questions regarding Socratic Seminars or would like some help putting one together!

Heidi K (Formerly Vandy)

What I learned at the ONE conference!

Each year going into the ONE Conference I am excited to learn some new tidbit of technology that I can use to enhance my classroom.  I tell teachers to find something in each presentation they can implement soon and, maybe, something that would be a stretch tech goal for themselves.

This year I was able to sit through a bunch of different presentations as I walked around the conference.  The first session I went to was led by the keynote speaker and he had some many quick tech tools to try, it was incredible.  Although he talked about many more, here are a few I thought were pretty good.

Poll Everywhere - A great website to use in a variety of different ways.  (There is also an app for students to log into if you want!) You can post a question and have students submit their thoughts.  The site can be used as a back-channel during a Socratic seminar with questions posted on it.  It can be used as formative assessment to get a quick feel on the students current proficiency.  Questions can be multiple choice, rank order, sortable list.  You can see the results in a variety of ways as well.  You can have many different questions and keep the answers to review.  The options are endless.




Post-It Plus (app) - This app will change your life if you regularly use Post-it note activities in your classes.  You can take a quick picture of the Post - its, with the app, sort them digitally, and have discussions with your class.  If they are Post-its you will use for more than just the moment, you can save them for future use.



Google Slides Q&A - Instead of having a completely different back channel going on while you present, Google Slides Q & A allows the audience to answer and ask questions, and you can see those immediately in your presentation.  Check out the link for a quick how-to.

Increasing Student Talk: Part 3 - Quick Writes

Increasing Student Talk: Part 3 - Quick Writes

Wait! How can you increase student talk with quick writes, that seems weird?  There are different ways to use quick writes during a lesson which will help you increase student talk.

One way to use quick writes to increase student talk is to have students work together to collaborate on the quick write.  As the teacher, you give the class the same prompt, or a different prompt to each group, and have the groups write about the prompt.  The groups can write on post-it notes, poster paper, or any other place you would like to collect their responses.  At the end of a set period of time, the groups can share out what they responded with the rest of the class.

Another way to use quick writes to increase student talk is to give the prompts to students to write about individually.  Then, after a period of time, have the students share with a partner, group, or full class.  This way students have already thought through their responses and may be more comfortable to share what they have to say, rather than thinking quickly.  Having students do a quick write first, before talking, also allows students who take longer to process questions the chance to share their responses.

Quick writes can be done in any content area. Check out this idea sheet for some quick writes in different content areas.  Also doing a search online regarding a specific topic might bring you more ideas.  I have also found some awesome quick write ideas in a book called "Independent Reading: Inside the Box" by Lisa Donohue.  I have a copy in my office if you want to check it out! You could also create an anchor chart around expectations during the two different types of quick writes.