Socratic Seminar: Providing a Frame for the Picture

We developed a metaphor in class today that is worth thinking about. A powerful text is your picture—a powerful question is your frame.

We are so accustomed to teaching as telling, that sometimes it can be hard to see that our most powerful tools for shaping student learning might be questions.  Questions suggest, they don’t dictate. They open up possibilities rather than certainties. Because a good question can be answered on many levels, questions might, I think, more easily meet students where they are at.

We can ask questions that move student attention in many different directions—inwards, towards their values; backwards in time, towards their experiences; out into the world, to a historical context they may or may not know much about; towards a problem, that a collective “we” must try to solve.  Each of these questioning strategies can be valuable in the social studies classroom.

In a Socratic Seminar, we ask questions that move students into a personal encounter with a text. What does this text say? What does this text mean? What does this historical actor think she is up to? What do I think she is up to? What parts of the text make me think the way I do?

The text is a great picture, but it is ultimately the frame that sets it off . . .