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Discover comprehensive reading solutions where learners jump 2, 3, and 4 grade levels in a single year.

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iLit Professional Learning Community is a social network

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As an assessment tool, each student completed an Exit Slip paragraph where they exercised their argumentative writing skills by completing a one paragraph reflection on the grade they deserved as a result of their participation in the seminar.

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A Socratic Seminar with Brian West of East Hall High School

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Thinking about doing a Socratic Seminar in class? Take a look at Mr. West's class.

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To occupy my outer circle, I distributed 5 ipads (1 for every 3 students) and allowed them to connect on todaysmeet.com.  There they posted thoughts, questions, comments and even prompts to assist the inner circle.

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Relinquishing control is the MOST DIFFICULT thing!!  Once the seminar begins you need to truly force yourself not to jump in and facilitate.  Initially, it is truly awkward.  Students nervously giggle and looked down at their papers.  No one seems willing to emerge as a leader.  But, once they realized that no one was coming to their rescue, the dialogue begin and WOW.

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Arranged your room in a double horseshoe configuration and assigned five students to be the inner circle. The inner circle students were slated to be the ones discussing and interacting. The outer circle of students were slated to observe and reflect and provide a 'backchannel'.

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The Questions

Students can be given a Socratic Seminar "Prep Sheet" at the beginning of the week.  The sheet asks the students to do the following:

#1.  Summarize the assigned reading
#2. Identify 3 compelling quotes or statements from the reading
#3.  Develop one Knowledge based question
#4.  Develop one Application style question
#5. Develop one Synthesis style question

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The approach begins by engaging in a guided reading of a novel.  Throughout the course of the week we read the novel and have CLASSROOM CONVERSATIONS about the story events and critical VOCABULARY associated with the readings.

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The Socratic style of discourse lends itself quite well to establishing critical thinkers due to the fact that Socrates believed that enabling students to think for themselves was more important than filling their heads with knowledge.

With so much talk about the standards and truly increasing our student's argumentative powers and critical thinking skills.