I was a last-minute fill in for a small conference section on using podcasts in the classroom this past Saturday. The conference organizers contacted me about a week before and asked if I was available to teach something and, of course, I said yes. I’d actually taught podcasting to other educators before… back in 2011. A lot has changed since then!
I had a great time using a little bit of my old information, plus a lot of my old podcasts that I had created, or my students had created, that were all still saved in my Google Drive.
I used podcasts as a method of content delivery for students. As part of a unit on Walden I realized there was information I wanted students to know and apply, but didn’t want to use class time for short lectures. Instead I chose to record short podcasts to encourage note-taking/active listening and be able to reach students even if they are absent during the week. This was my first foray into a flipped classroom and podcasts are still a great alternative to screencasting for flipped and blended learning.
Here’s the site I created to house information for my attendees: http://podcasted.us
A well-structured Socratic seminar, and the learning that leads up to it, helps keep students excited and engaged in learning. Classroom discussion has a .82 effect size on John Hattie’s “list of influences on achievement” because dialogue itself is engaging. It gives students opportunities to interact with one another that are sometimes rare in classes.
9) Scaffolding
Most of us scaffold work for students so that they have incremental steps to take in order to achieve a goal (note: you can over-scaffold – think of how annoying really shallow steps are). The steps that culminate in a Socratic seminar support skills in close reading, inquiry and question writing, short written responses, small group discussion, and even text selection.
8) Inquiry
Questioning has an effect size of .48. When students have the opportunity to dive deeper, through posing open-ended questions, they usually become more attached to a subject. The Question Formulation Technique supports the process of asking questions – these questions can become the discussion questions or the seminar or be used and investigated at any point in the learning.
7) Differentiation of tasks
Educators have students with a wide-range of abilities in classes. Differentiating tasks that lead to a Socratic seminar helps ensure that individual needs are met and that student small groups have diverse resources to support preliminary discussion (aka coaching groups). The diversity of experiences makes seminars rich – not agreeing creates more productive discussion.
6) Close reading
Socratic seminar depends on students reading and understanding a text in order to discuss aspects of the text with others. Teaching close reading, a skill that is essential to success in other classes as well, is a vital scaffold. Using annotation to get students to cue into what they think and feel, not to mention what they say, is engaging and helps support other learning.
5) Argument
Reading closely and answering authentic questions through inquiry supports students as they learn to build arguments. Being able to cite text in order to support an opinion (kind of like I did above when I cited Hattie) is a necessary skills to getting ready for college and careers. Supporting an opinion with text evidence makes seminars an academic task that goes beyond a regular old class discussion of a topic.
4) Analysis and Synthesis
Socratic seminars require analysis of at least one text, but bringing together multiple texts, and discussing them together, requires synthesis skills. This means more prep time leading up to the seminar but the combining of texts is extremely dynamic and the takes students have on those ideas will make you proud. Often discussion is a great way to build skills in analyzing and synthesizing because students get to hear from their peers and learn how others approach complex topics, making students engage rather than just comply, with tasks.
3) Change it up!
Your Socratic seminar does not have to look the same every time. You can use the Harkness method (this provides students clear & high expectations, an effect size of 1.44), a fishbowl discussion, open chair, BRAWL, and any number of other techniques. Changing up your approach keeps things fresh for students and helps to differentiate instruction to include more students. Find methods that challenge students and methods that embrace them – they may be the same method!
2) Build relationships
In some classes, but especially large classes, students might go a whole year without knowing one another’s names. Socratic seminar can require that students respond directly to classmates (making nameplates for desks/tables helps) so that, over time, they learn the names of students who sit across the room or are in different cliques. The discussion itself can assist in building connections and empathy for others, not to mention help the teacher know the students in order to better meet their needs over time.
And, the NUMBER ONE reason to use Socratic seminar? It meets ALL the standards
When I look through my “Skinnied” CCSS I can see that seminar, and the tasks that build to seminar or extend it further (like using the questions for research), meets every. single. standard.
These are my Skinny Standards paint sticks – at the end of a PL session we used them to reflect on what seminar could do for student learning
What’s your favorite reason for using Socratic seminar in classroom instruction? Or, what’s stopping you?
I attended the 2018 Learning Forward conference with the intent to learn more about PLCs and how I could help our district implement them more effectively. While I learned many valuable lessons regarding leadership and teamwork, I came away with an overall sense of how every presentation I sat through was excellent, and how it all came down to the presenter. Now, my background is in English Rhetoric so it should come as no surprise I value a good presenter. That said, the conference and it’s participants reminded me of how important presenting skills are, and they are skills. No one is born a wonderful presenter. Fast forward to the other fun part of conferences for an English teacher, buying books, and I was delighted to see The Choreography of Presenting by Kendall Zoller and Claudette Landry.
“Like a great dance partner, an excellent presenter leads others with ease and confidence. By showing how verbal and nonverbal communication shape every aspect of a successful presentation, this engaging book helps readers develop the underlying skills for polished, successful public speaking.”
This book uses the metaphor of dance to educate those who don’t know the first thing about presenting as well as remind those of us who could always stand to improve upon existing skills. Along with narratives of both positive and negative experiences from the authors’ presenting past, there are useful charts that provide step-by-step practice on certain elements. Have a presentation coming up? There are places in the book to reflect on your practice. The parts of the book I particularly enjoyed were those focused on movement- hand, eye, and even full body. The “dance” you do while presenting really does matter.
“A still hand gesture is the visual correlation to an auditory pause.”
While this book is meant for educators, I plan on utilizing it with my AP Capstone Seminar students next year. It’s applicable and understandable. New presenters and old alike, I encourage you to read the 124 pages. You won’t regret it, and you’ll come away a more effective presenter.
Speaking and listening support for students is essential – the skills support all of the other work kids need to do when they are reading and writing. But most people have a fear of public speaking, including teachers, so we can forget to scaffold the skills with smaller tasks.
A great way to use to give students practice speaking in class is to let them read aloud a short selection of their reading for class. If the expectation while they read is to mark the text, then marking something they loved – a turn of phrase, a descriptive detail, imagery, etc. – can easily be shared. As a teacher, you are then assessing reading while assessing speaking.
Once the passage is chosen, have students whisper read to themselves, or read with a partner. Practice reading out loud in different ways helps avoid embarrassing mispronunciations or other issues that would reinforce public speaking as a scary experience. Practicing also helps student read more fluently over time, demonstrating to them the need to practice in order to improve.
I often have students record themselves since I had a BYOD policy in effect. That way they can troubleshoot their own voice performance through an audio recording, or record with video in order to critique themselves or critique with a partner.
Finally, have students read their passage to the class! You can create a specific list so they know when their turn is or you can have them “popcorn” read so they can jump in. More than one student can have the same favorite passage and passages can be read in any order.
This activity is great because it’s informal but gives students exposure to reading and public speaking. There are lots of ways to extend it as well: FlipGrid readings, writing a rationale for the selection, found poems from the passage, pastiche, etc.
I’m not sure there is anything better than 17th Century poetry used in a rap battle. I used THIS lesson plan from last year since my Honors American Literature students are reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is included in chapter 23.
A screencast is a video made of the activity on your computer screen for the purpose of demonstration or communication.
How can you use screencasts in your classroom?
How to videos
Show a process or series of actions and are often easier to follow than written instructions.
Show students your own thought processes as your read and mark-up a text
Show how to determine if a website or article is a quality source
Student feedback
You can use a screencast as a way of commenting on an electronically submitted student paper, highlighting and adding notations on your screen at the same time. (saving paper too!)
Are there more possibilities?
There are a lot of creative ways to use screencasting software to teach and engage students and parents. I especially like the Get Inspired! web page on Tech Smith’s website.
English Techie 