How to implement Socratic Seminar in the classroom

Socratic Seminar Lesson Plan

The purpose of a Socratic seminar is for students to create a deeper understanding about the ideas buried in any text. During the seminar, students question and examine ideas related to the text and to the real world. Facing History and Ourselves has a great selection of ideas for Socratic seminars, as does Read Write Think and Edutopia.

Socratic seminar lends itself nicely in a high school setting, but students in middle school need a bit more scaffolding to be successful with this structure of learning. There are a few ways that you can organize a middle school class discussion:

Put students in groups of 4-5 and have them discuss ideas. This works great so that students have more of a chance to contribute.

Pair students and have one be a designated speaker and one be the note taker the entire discussion, They can switch roles during the discussion. or the note taker can whisper ideas for the speaker.

Their grade is based on both verbal participation and the notes, so it is truly a team effort. This is a larger discussion group, so students have to really be assertive to get their voices heard. You could also split this into another group, so you have two circles of discussion happening.

To help students learn to be be more accountable and because we can’t be everywhere at once, we have another student in the group tally how many times another student speaks. Any student who speaks needs to also be aware of the student keeping track of his/her contributions to the discussion. Check out our Teachers Pay Teachers Store for our socratic seminar handouts.

Overall, using a Socratic seminar questions as one of your teaching tools is a great way to have students extend their learning with any piece of text or research. We also like to use Socratic seminars with our article of the week (AOW) as an end of the week discussion instead of an on-demand write from time to time.

It also lends itself quite nicely to the historical time period of the Enlightenment. We have our students research an enlightenment thinker and then become that person in the discussion. It is such a great learning experience for students. Our students beg for Socratic seminars, and we hope that yours do, too!