Socratic Seminar

 Socratic Seminar

This model helps students to develop age-appropriate discussion skills for controversial or multisided topics. It is not a debate. The focus is on listening, articulation of ideas, and respect. Students do not have to reach a common decision, but they should expand their thinking and come to an educated personal decision or viewpoint on the topic. Objectives and assessments should target higher-order thinking skills. Teacher should establish both content and behavioral objectives. 

If you want to learn more about developing a Socratic classroom, check out Matt Copeland's book, Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School, in which he illustrates multiple simple and complex versions of the Socratic model. 

Steps to the model

1. Choose the text--Written, visual, or Audio (part of teacher preparation). 
• Text should be related to the "big ideas" of your unit, or your essential questions. 
• Text should be at appropriate age and cognitive level. 
2. Plan and cluster several questions of varying cognitive demand (part of teacher prep). 
• Have a broad "umbrella" question (e.g. your essential question) that summarizes the issue. 
• Use Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy as a guide for creating "stratified" or "leveled" questions. 
• Questions should be open ended. 
3. Introduce the model to the students. 
• Let students know the model is to help them engage in intellectual conversation. 
• Make sure that everyone participates and no one dominates. 
• Students should prepare for the discussion by annotating the text or taking notes. (You may use annotated text as an "entry ticket" to the discussion.)
• Teacher may provide discussion "prompts" for students. 
4. Conduct the discussion. 
• Students should support their comments with evidence. 
• Only one student should speak at a time. 
• Students should sit in a circle so they are talking to each other. Teacher may sit inside or outside the circle. 
• Introduce the umbrella question at the beginning of the discussion, but don't answer it until the end. Tell students they need to build up to that questions by answering some other questions first. 
5. Review and summarize the discussion. 
• Take time at the end of the discussion for students to process the information (metacognition) or the benefits to the discussion are lost. 
• Students evaluate the content of the discussion and determine the most important ideas. 
6. Evaluate the discussion. 
• Students evaluate the process and their personal contributions. 
• Did they cite reasons and evidence for comments? 
• Did they speak clearly and listen respectfully? 
• Did they avoid hostile exchanges? 
• Were they prepared for the seminar? 
• Set goals for the next discujssion.