The majority of my students have been so excited about the text that I have to tell them to put away their books and focus on the class. It's wonderful to have students who care about the text. I actually have one student that went home, downloaded the book and has already read that book and the next two in the series. The problem I am facing now is that I only have 30 copies of the text and 160 students. So, we have to do all reading in class. Because of this limitation I have to cut some of my actual instructional strategies. I feel as if time and materials are preventing me from doing the in depth teaching I would like to.
One of the strategies I was able to use was a Socratic seminar. This activity was incredibly fun and fruitful. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed using this in my classroom. When I read about the strategy, it honestly seems a little boring, but in practice it was awesome.The most difficult part of the strategy was keeping myself in the role of facilitator and limiting my opinions/ input. I know you're all surprised, I had trouble not talking. I usually talk so much in class because I HATE dead quiet time in class. I can't stand it when a teacher asks a question and the students just stare back, allowing the awkward silence to fill the air. It's a waste of everyone's time, it's boring, it's annoying and it's rude. I understand people who are shy or honestly don't know, but someone should say something. I don't mind the silence in my own classroom, nor do I talk over my students. I allow them ample time to share their responses. Staying silent for the Socratic seminar was difficult because I had to let some teachable moments go in order to allow conversation to move.
Rose I had the same problem during my TWS. We had 28 copies of the book and sometimes more students than books if someone checked one out for make up work, ISS, or OSS. I would get so frustrated because I had all of these awesome ideas and plans that I had to cut just so we could read the book. As crazy as I thought Alby was in the summer for summarizing some chapters and shortening a book I am now contemplating doing this in my own classroom. Would you do the same?
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed with the results you got from doing Socratic seminar. I can only imagine how hard it was to let those moments pass so you could keep your role.
I have the same problem. I want them to understand and come to their own conclusions so badly I feel as if I'm not giving them enough information or too much. So I alternate between the two and try to find a happy medium. Sometimes we talk over each other but I stop and ask them to repeat themselves. (Easy enough to do because the acoustics in the room make it hard for me to hear and the students are used to me stopping, apologizing, and putting my hand to my ear so I can hear them.) They have also become a bit more receptive to raising their hands. We then pick up where we left off before moving in a new direction.
ReplyDeleteI also use Discussion Leaders and Prime Speakers to help keep track of the conversations we have during Socratic seminar so we can pick up any left over topics the next day. Perhaps this will work in your class too.
I hate letting teachable moments go by but I make note of them and they will become new units.
What sort of policies and procedures did you establish for the socratic seminar? I thought about trying to do a socratic seminar but I had the same worries you did about having too much dead time.
ReplyDeleteWhen we read the graphic novel for Othello we did all of the reading in class and only used one copy which was scanned and projected from the overhead. For our reading of Freakonomics we only read a few select chapters. Luckily, we watched about twenty minutes of the movie each day and that was sufficient in filling in the information from the other chapters.
I agree with gabriel that if you let a teachable moment pass it is important to take note of it so you can try to slip it into a later unit or have a proper response if it ever recurs.
I had the exact same problem in our class Rose. We have 50 students and we didn't want to have the students only reading in class. The problem was with ours however, that we had copies for everyone, but the teacher didn't want them to take them home because he didn't trust the students to keep up with them. This made sense to me, but at at the same time, I thought it was kind of low. Why not give the students a copy if we have plenty? We finally ended up having to in order to complete the TWS because of CRCT interference. For the most part, the students have returned their books, some have not, but I felt that they loved taking it home to read it. Most of my students begged me to let them take home their books to read ahead.
ReplyDeleteAs for your Socratic seminar, I've never heard of it, but I don't think I'd be able to be quiet in class either. I hate those moments of silence too...
and Katie, I hated summarizing too, but when it came to The Diary of a Young Girl, I HAD To summarize for the students to be able to complete their performance tasks on time. I hated it but it was necessary...guess it helps sometimes I suppose, no matter how much we don't like it :(
I agree, Rose, especially if you were using guidelines of Paideia that I shared with the class, you turn the talk over to the students. As teachers, though, sometimes we learn so much more by listening.
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