| “Socratic circles are the best activity that takes place in my classroom, bar none… Critical reading, critical thinking, discussion skills, listening skills, team-building skills, vocabulary improvement, and student ownership, voice, and empowerment are all valid reasons for including Socratic circles in the classroom.” ~ Matt Copeland, author of Socratic Circles |
If you’ve never tried Socratic Circles in your classroom, you might like to read this introductory post. Here, I’d like to share a few specific examples of how Socratic dialogue can connect with your content and incorporate thinking tools, the same ones you are already using with students.
SOCRATIC DIALOGUE vs. DISCUSSIONS
In my mind, the main thing that sets a Socratic dialogue apart is that the teacher does not lead the conversation. In a Socratic Circle, after a simple prompt, students do the majority of the talking, listening, and questioning, and it takes time for students to learn the skills of this type of dialogue; they must be explicitly taught. But I have found it is well worth the time and effort!
CONNECTING to CONTENT and THEMES
Anything that gets students thinking can prompt a dialogue – a poem, a philosophical question, a painting, song lyrics, a comic- the sky’s the limit. Selecting prompts that connect to your universal themes or content and allow students to use various thinking tools can inspire greater depth in the dialogue and also “enlarge understanding.”
FIFTH GRADE EXAMPLES
The 5th-grade universal theme – IMPACT – can prompt many rich discussions (as shared in this video). In my classroom, we had Socratic dialogues at least once a month (we met once a week). By fifth grade, my students were familiar with and used many types of thinking tools including the tools of Depth and Complexity, Thinking Hats, and Thinking Maps, and they intentionally selected specific tools for specific tasks (read about the Thinker’s Toolbox here).
Every group is different, and many variables can affect the perceived “success” of a dialogue. Sometimes our dialogues were truly animated and engaging, and other times a little disappointing (let’s be honest- such is a teacher’s life). But here are three ideas you can try with your students or use to inspire your own ideas.
Socratic Circle #1: Six-Hat Thinking / Multiple Perspectives
This idea combines the use of the Thinking Hats with one of the tools of Depth and Complexity. This works best with topics that students might feel strongly about or that are relevant to them, such as:
- Should schools move to a year-round calendar?
- Should a minimum age be set for owning a Smartphone?
- Should all schools require that students wear school uniforms?
- You may find other debate questions here that relate to your studies.
| It would be easy to connect any of those questions with your universal themes since they are part of SYSTEMS that IMPACT us, and the impact, particularly long-term, is often a MYSTERY to us. We have UNANSWERED QUESTIONS related to possible unintended consequences. |
One way students might visualize their thinking is through a handout such as the one shown below. You can view the entire handout HERE or make a copy HERE.
As students share their thinking in a Socratic dialogue, they might point out how looking at the idea from different perspectives changed their thinking.
A NOVEL APPROACH:
If you’d like to try something really different, you could have students secretly assume different roles (e.g. parent, company owner, teacher, lawyer, police officer) and dialogue from their chosen perspective without revealing the role. Students could be allowed to discuss both from their own perspectives as well as the “assumed” perspective.
After the dialogue, everyone attempts to guess the role some were “playing.” This adds a bit of a guessing game to the conversation while still requiring students to follow all the guidelines for the Socratic circle.
Socratic Circle #2 – Frames for Thinking
If your students are familiar with the tools of Depth and Complexity, this could work well for a dialogue about a specific text.
Have students read the text and complete a frame that you’ve prepared. Ian Byrd and Lisa van Gemert explain that frames should include thought-provoking questions in each section (see Chapter 24 in The Gifted Guild’s Guide to Depth and Complexity). Students would then bring their completed frames to the dialogue to use during the discussion. Here is a sample frame for the text “The Asu Tribe” (see Surprise Endings: Lesson With a Twist). This lesson can be done with a Socratic circle as the format for discussion. HERE is a PDF of this frame, and you can create your own using the Gifted Guru’s free templates found here.
Socratic Circle #3 – Impact of an Invention
In a previous post, Impact Invention / Unintended Consequence: A Critical-Thinking Activity, you can find lessons about the positive and negative impacts that new inventions have on our lives. One includes creating an invention impact map such as the detailed one shown below.
Many times we have students do an activity and then just discuss it as a class or have groups of students “share out.” It could be interesting to have students share in a Socratic circle.
For this activity, you could first give students a limited amount of time to work on an impact map, showing as many positive and negative impacts as they can think of (including primary and secondary effects). Then, have students gather to share in a Socratic circle. After the conversation, students return their maps to add to them. This could even be part of an assessment of the dialogue since students’ maps would show evidence that they had listened to one another.
Recently, Joelle Trayers, whose strategies were featured in the book The Gifted Guild’s Guide to Depth and Complexity, shared via social media about a Socratic circle she facilitated with fifth graders. Joelle reviewed the guidelines for discussion and shared an excerpt from an article on this topic. (Note: the article Joelle used was from a subscription-based site, but you could share excerpts from this one since it presents similar information.)
| FROM JOELLE: “Our discussion got into how some students use social media and how they feel like sometimes it rules their lives a bit. One student asked if it was the same in other countries and I thought that was an amazing question since there are places where people don’t have cell phones as we do. How were their perspectives different from ours? What I love about Socratic circles is the way discussions are completely directed by the students’ responses. I like to take them outside and get them out of their comfort zones a bit. There’s nothing like seeing students inspiring each other’s thinking.” |
The types of discussions you have in your room certainly vary with your purposes, and your students may need more exposure to some of these tools. These ideas will hopefully give you some food for thought and perhaps inspire you to try some new prompts for your dialogues.
Let us know if you do try any of these ideas or one of your own! We’d love to hear about in the comments below or in our Facebook group.
Related Resources
Classroom Conversations: Video-Prompted Socratic Dialogue
Quiet Conversations: 3 Ways to Hold a Silent Dialogue
