A Socratic Seminar Success

As we wrapped up our study of The Hunger Games, my sophomore team agreed to conclude the unit with a socratic seminar.  I had done a quick version of it during our poetry unit last April, but with the team's help, we crafted a truly unique, challenging, and rewarding experience for the students.

The original seminar was inspired by Esther Wu's seminar "The N-Word" on Teaching Channel.  Take a look below to be inspired yourself!

I love using Teaching Channels videos to inspire my own teaching!  I never would have thought to use a list of transitions as Esther did.  We used, tweaked, and modified her resources, and our version can be found here:

Socratic Seminar:  The Hunger Games
The Seminar Packet
The Coaching Protocol
The Listening Roles

Holding your own Socratic Seminar!
Plan two periods to prep the students, two days to conduct the seminar, and one half-period for reflection.

The speakers are seated at a central table while coaches sit behind their protege.   One student is at the front of the room taking notes in the Big Board role (as developed by Esther Wu).

On the prep days, we focused on teaching transitions and building an arsenal of textual evidence for the questions that students felt passionate about.  We took our time going through each of the questions so that the students could highlight the 3-4 that they wanted to tackle right out of the gates on their day for the seminar.

On the days of the seminar, the students were broken into two groups:  SPEAKER & LISTENER.  On the first day, they did one role, and on the second, they switched.

Students sit in the back of the room in their Evaluator roles (transition tracker, comment counter, general evaluator, etc.)  I sat next to them taking notes and grading the discussion.

On the day following the last seminar, be sure to provide time for reflection.  This day was so rich for my students!  I asked them four simple reflection questions, had them answer at their desks, and then we created a graffiti wall of responses, memories, shout-outs, and highlights from the socratic seminar experience.

Taking the Common Core Challenge!

   

     Every week, I take time to catch up on the latest blogs and videos at Teaching Channel.  I'm at this

website more often than any other educational website for so many reasons, but mainly I love watching other teachers teach; it inspires me and motivates me to keep trying new lessons, better understand Common Core, and connect with other educators outside of my little bubble.

     When I logged in this week, I noticed that they were hosting a Common Core Challenge.  Naturally, I accepted.  I watched several videos of teachers in action, reinvented their strategies into my own new lesson, taught it, and now have the lesson to share with you!  I actually did this for an observation with my secondary evaluator and it went pretty well (a few technology glitches with polleverywhere.com, but that was okay).  So here you go, world!  This is how I took on Common Core Challenge 2013:

1. Accept the challenge:  I registered here to officially accept the challenge
   
   (https://www.teachingchannel.org/challenge/steps)
2. Watch the videos:  I watched Sarah's videos for "Meeting our Monsters" and Sayuri's "The Omnivore's Dilemma:  Close Reading of a Non-Fiction Text".  I don't think I followed the challenge exactly, but both videos inspired my lesson for the week as I somehow combined my favorite elements of each.  I needed to do a close reading activity, and I really liked the group think strategies that Sarah used.
3. Write/Plan the lesson:  Using the CCSS Instructional Practice Guide, I crafted my lesson to use with The Hunger Games.  We did a close reading analyzing Katniss' complex characterization.  You can check out my lesson here and my handouts below:
   
   
   Dystopia KQL (my spin off of the KWL)
   Close-read notes sheet
   Close read text
   
   
4. Send feedback:  the final step in the challenge was to report back to Teaching Channel about how the Challenge went.  I send mine in today!  Overall, the lesson went really well.  I have the videos to thank for that.  There's something about watching another teacher in action that makes doing it yourself feel so much more successful.  The use of polleverywhere was a great success.  With the kiddos, it was a bit rough (they kept getting confused with which number to text, how to start the message, etc.) but they LOVED seeing their responses pop up on the screen in the front of the room.  The passages were also a really nice scaffold:   because they were long, every student could close read as much or as little as they could handle.  Then, when they turned and talked to each other, they were still able to have a shared text and help each other see it through the eyes of their annotations.

Check out the Common Core Challenge videos here: