Aligned with Student Learning Outcomes
SLO3. The student applies and values user education principles in the teaching of information literacy.
Artifact
Lead Instructional Strategy: Socratic Seminars
Reflection
Socratic seminars are an excellent way to let your students take the lead in thinking through and solving problems with each other, review for tests, discuss controversial issues, and more. It takes practice and patience, but students really love it and can benefit from the interactions with their peers. Because the success of a socratic seminar requires students’ understanding of text, information literacy must be taught in conjunction with running the seminar. Student inquiry and thinking are central to the philosophy of socratic seminars and the most common measure of success is through reflection, from both the teacher and students. The reflection should focus on the students’ ability to keep the discussion based on the text for the duration of the seminar. Socratic seminars apply each of the four standards from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) in a continuous cycle of thinking, concluding, sharing, and learning.
During my interactions with students in socratic seminars, I quickly realized that this strategy takes a lot of practice. Students are not used to speaking their minds and opinions formally and openly in front of their peers and teachers. Furthermore, it requires preparation on behalf of the student to be able to respond appropriately when being challenged by an opposing viewpoint. The advantages of running these seminars on a regular basis are students will learn strong communication skills, respect for diverse opinions, and will retain the information gleaned from each discussion and text referenced. In addition to a lot of practice, ensuring students are prepared for the seminar is a necessity since seminars ask students to keep focusing back on the text. It is usually best to tell students ahead of time when they will be expected to participate in a socratic seminar. We gave our students rubrics in advance so they would know exactly what we expected from them.
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