How to Liven Up Your Socratic Seminar and Get Students Talking

One of my favorite things about being an English teacher is hearing my students have deep discussions about literature. I mean half of the people I know go to book clubs for fun, so how awesome is it that I get paid to do this!? …sans wine 😉

The value of Socratic Seminars is tremendous, but just like with anything, hosting them the same way every time can become mundane for you and your students. That said, if you are new to the Socratic method of teaching and need to master the basics before you spice things up, this is the post you need: How to host a Socratic Seminar in Secondary ELA. Otherwise, here are some ways to spice up your next class discussion to get students talking.  

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How to liven up your Socratic Seminar to get students talking

Toss a Socratic Soccer ball

This has been one of my most popular strategies of the years and rightly so! It’s a great tool to have on hand and toss around when students start to lose focus or drift off during reading time. It can be used with any text, and the gist is this:

• 1. Get a soccer ball and a Sharpie. You can use a real soccer ball or an inflatable soccer ball.
• 2. Write Socratic Seminar question starters on the ball (see picture)
• 3. Have students stand up in a circle and toss the ball around. When they catch it, they can call out any question in their vision on the ball (no turning the ball around).
• 4. You can complete the question for them and they answer it OR have them complete the question and toss it to someone else to answer it.
• 5. You can choose to gamify this discussion activity any more by allowing blocking, passing, goals points, etc. Be sure to sign up for my Building Book Love Letter below to get a list of Socratic Seminar starters and the full set of directions and ideas for this ELA activity.

If you happen to be looking to tweak this question ball for younger readers, you should check out this blog post that featured my idea in their roundup: Reading comprehension games that students will want to play over and over! 

PLAY SOCRATIC SEMINAR BINGO

Students love games. This CONVO BINGO strategy provides accountable talk, choice, and accountability all in one easy-to-play game. You can download a premade class discussion BINGO board here: Socratic Seminar Worksheets and Games or make your own. The idea is that get BINGO by participating in the class discussion while using a variety of accountable talking strategies.

You can decide the rules, but try to give a special prize for students who get BINGO to play into the game aspect. If you have students who overpower the conversation, make sure to implement the rule that you can’t have more than 5 boxes marked.

WEB OF WORDS OR HARKNESS dISCUSSION METHOD

Sometimes certain texts drain the energy from the room (here’s looking at you, Hamlet), so you need activities like the Socratic soccer ball to keep students actively learning. Other times, certain topics create a burst of unfocused energy, so you need a strategy to help center that conversation into a productive format. This is where Harkness discussion tracking comes into play. This strategy is SILLY SIMPLE and requires no prep which makes it easy to implement on the fly to capture moments of passionate debate in the classroom! 

• 1. While you are drawing or projecting the circle, have students do a quick prewrite (You can download my Speedy Starters in this pack)
• 2. Technically, teachers are not supposed to be a part of the circle, but as you can see in my image, I put myself at the top, closest to the board. It’s a good way for me to track myself plus gives an anchor to make the circle. 

3. Next, tell your pillar students to move to their spot of the room that matches up with the diagram. For example, Jamison would be in the back of my room in the pictured circle, and I would be at the front closest to the board. Lastly, have your other students move to their spot on the circle base on your chart.

4. Before you begin the discussion, explain that the goal is to have equal lines crisscrossing the circle. No one person should have too many lines and no one person should have zero lines. Now, start the discussion. When one person speaks, you are in charge of drawing a line from his name to the person who adds to the conversation. As students start to see lines, they can visualize who is dominating the conversation and who hasn’t added to it at all. It works like a dream!

5. If you want to up the evaluation of this class discussion, make a key with symbols that you can add to each name. For example, !=Great insight, ? = Excellent question,  * = Star communicator , etc.

After practicing this method as a whole class, students can branch out into smaller groups and track their own conversations. This is scaffolding at its best, and you will feel so proud later in the semester when your students are having and tracking meaningful conversations all on their own! *For large class sizes, breaking up into smaller circles may be the only way to achieve this method.

fUN SOCRATIC SEMINAR SENTENCE STARTERS

Funny Socratic Seminar posters or cards are a fun way to get students talking and can be used in a variety of ways! Some might feel a little silly or cause a few giggles, but I believe this is a great thing! It takes a little of the formality out of accountable talk circles. When students feel comfortable, they are more willing to open up and let their ideas flow.

Here are some emotion themed accountable talking posters and playing cards I created: Accountable Talk Stems, Posters, Task Cards, and Games : Emotion Theme

If you prefer not to use themes or puns, I have a regular set of talking stems in my Talking Toolkit that work wonders when students are stuck on what to say in a discussion.

Other fun Socratic Seminar starter ideas are:

• Play Word Sneak

• Use memes

• Use a pop culture theme (whatever is hot at the moment!)

Host a colorful convo silent discussion

You now have resources for fostering successful and sociable classroom discussions. Now let’s add a strategy for all the introverts in the room like me! Out loud discussions are great, but some students can be much more articulate online. I think it’s very important to give these students a voice and a chance to shine.

The gist of this discussion strategy is for each student to create their own unique text color or color combo that will follow them throughout the digital discussion. Of course, technology tracks who comments on what, but using colors allows students to visually see how much they are contributing and how the convo is flowing.

This screen shot and video above was part of a demo I did and shows that I am the pink text. Others are replying to me in the same text box but in their own unique color. You can easily make your own collaborative document or download the one in my discussion pack here: Socratic Seminar Talking Toolkit

Play Transition WORDS cONNECT 4

In the ideal classroom of our teacher dreams, students would naturally know how to carry a conversation. And maybe they do, just not about the stuff we want them to discuss. 😉 Sometimes simply giving students one word transition prompts can help students to contribute to the conversation in meaningful ways.

The idea is to provide a big list of transition words that prompt students contribute, agree, disagree, support, elaborate, challenge, summarize, clarify, and connect during a class discussion. Students can either play each other groups or the whole class can play against you as the teacher. You do not need the connect four game set. I just wanted to give you the idea. All you need is a grid of transition words and students can (or you) can mark them out as they are used. You can find my big list of Socratic Seminar transitions here: Socratic Seminar Talking Toolkit

I hope your next class discussion is a success! If you need more Socratic Seminar guidance such as Socratic Seminar question examples, expectations, and more, keep reading here: How to host a Socratic Seminar in Secondary ELA