Instructional Content
Content:
- This activity is a follow-up and student reflection on a previous research project the students completed.
- The following standards are addressed as part of this experience:
- CCSS: Speaking and Listening Anchor 1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
- Specific SL Standards: SL1A, SL1C
- ELD: Collaboration 1: Exchanging information and ideas with others through oral collaborative discussions on a range of social and academic topics.
- CCSS: Speaking and Listening Anchor 1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Intentional Instructional Design:
- ISTE Standard 7, Global Collaborators: Students used a backchannel to collaborate and engage in a secondary discussion where they contributed to the primary conversation taking place in the center circle. By engaging in two conversation rounds, the students assumed different roles to engage in the conversation, both verbally and in written form.
A Visual Representation of the Process
| Seminar Round 1 | Seminar Round 2 |
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Socratic Seminar
A Socratic seminar often begins with the discussion leader, a student or the teacher, asking an open-ended question. Silence is fine. It may take a few minutes for students to warm up. Sometimes teachers organize a Socratic seminar like a fishbowl, with some students participating in the discussion and the rest of the class having specific jobs as observers. Socratic seminars should be given at least fifteen minutes per round and can often last thirty minutes or more. As students become more familiar with Socratic seminars, they are able to hold a round of conversation for longer periods of time without any teacher intervention.
Backchannel Usage (TodayMeet):
Allowing the students outside of the “fishbowl” to introduce a new way to interact with the inner conversations, the Socratic Seminar takes on a whole new form. Students outside of the fishbowl center their backchannel discussions on what they are observing inside the fishbowl. The students are able to make clarifying comments, as well as ask additional questions that can be addressed as part of an additional reflection at a later time.