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A Workshop in Socratic Seminar
Eastern Suffolk BOCES
December 2, 2015
Presenter: Amy Benjamin
www.amybenjamin.com
Agenda:
1. What do we already know about Socratic Seminar?
2. Comparing traditional reading comprehension lesson with Socratic Seminar
3. Demonstration of Socratic Seminar on various types of texts
Lunch
4. Creating a rubric
5. Your turn to practice!
Text-Based Questions Aligned to the CC Reading Standards:
Reading Standard / Questions /1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. / What do you think is the author’s point in writing this? How do you know?
What can we assume about _____?
Is that stated explicitly or is it implied? Show us where.
What do you think lines xx-xx mean?
2: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development, summarize the key supporting details and ideas. / What is the author saying to support the idea that ______?
Often an author will repeat his or her main idea in different places. Are you seeing that? Where?
Authors usually give examples. Are you seeing any? Why might the author have chosen these particular examples?
Authors usually give visuals. Are you seeing any? Why night the author have chosen these particular visuals?
3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. / What is the relationship between this (event, character, setting, detail) and that (event, character, setting, detail)?
Why do you think the author chose to include this detail? How would it change the overall meaning if this detail were left out?
4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. / Are there any words or phrases that you want to know more about?
Are there any words that are used in unusual ways?
Look at the word ____. Is that word used literally or metaphorically? How do you know?
Find a metaphor. Metaphors have their power in making associations. What association is the author wanting us to make here. Why?
What would you say is the tone of this piece? At what point in the piece does the tone become obvious? How?
5: Analyze the structure of the text, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., sections, chapters, scenes, stanzas) relate to each other and the whole. / Authors may give us specific words to make transitions. Are you seeing any of those? What kind of transition are we seeing with that word? How is the author setting us up for what he or she is leading to?
Authors may make abrupt transitions. Are you seeing any? What is their effect?
Authors always make decisions about where to say what they say. Why do you think the author began the piece this way? Why do you think the author ended the piece this way?
Authors may present information in a direct, linear way; or, they may jump around in time. How is this information arranged? Why do you think the author chose to use this arrangement?
6: Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of text. / Do you sense that the author has a particular point of view (bias) about this subject, or do you think the author is trying to be completely objective?
How do you know what the author’s point of view is, judging by the author’s diction (word choice)?
What do you think the author wants you to say or think after reading this?
Vocabulary for Speaking about Abstract Ideas:
Abstract Noun-Making Suffixes: -ment, -ness, -ity, -tion/sion, -ism,
-hood, -ship, -ance/ence
Snow
(1) Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
(5) He asked who had that them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn’t know where I was going with this.
(10) They were on his property, I said.
When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
(15) We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
—David Berman
Introductory to Poetry
(1) I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
(2) or press an ear against its hive.
(3) I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
(4) or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
(5) I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
(6) But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with top
and torture a confession out of it.
(7) They begin beating it with a hose
to find it what it really means.
Billy Collins
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Thumbprint
(1) In the heel of my thumb
are whorls, whirls, wheels
in a unique design:
mine alone.
(5) What a treasure to own!
My own flesh, my own feelings.
No other, however grand or base,
can ever contain the same.
My signature,
(10) thumbing the pages of my time.
My universe key,
my singularity.
Impress, implant,
I am myself,
(15) Of all my atom parts I am the sum.
And out of my blood and my brain
I make my own interior weather,
My own sun and rain.
Imprint my mark upon the world,
whatever I shall become.
-Sara Teasdale
St. Crispin’s Day Speech
William Shakespeare, 1599
Although Shakespere penned this work nearly two hundred years after the Battle of Agincourt (1415), it remains the finest dramatic interpretation of what leadership meant to the men in the Middle Ages. With morale low and soldiers badly weakened by disease on the eve of battle, and with the knowledge that the French were far better armed and better skilled, the story goes that King Henry V went about on foot encouraging his troops, rallying them to what turned out to be one of the most an astonishing victories in military history.
King Henry V
Enter the KING.
(1) This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
(5) He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
(10) Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
(15) Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
(20) But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
(25)And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHYeDqEngxU
Henry V, Act III, scene i
(1a) Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
(5a) but when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage.
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,
(10a) Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon, let the brow overwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a gall-ed rock
O’er hang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
(15a) Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,
Fathers that like so many Alexanders
(20a) Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers; not attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
(25a) Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture: let us swear
You are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,
There is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
(30a)I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and upon this charge,
Cry ‘God for Harry! England! and Saint George!’
The World is a Beautiful Place
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(1) The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing all the time
(2) The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you done mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half bad
if it isn’t you
(3) Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
(4) As our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
(5) and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
(6) Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
(6a) and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
(6b) and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
(6c) and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
’living it up’
(6c) Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
A Fairly Sad Tale
Dorothy Parker
(1) I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
(5) The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me—I don’t know how to plan it.
The lads I’ve met in Cupid’s deadlock
(10) Were—shall we say?—born out of wedlock.
They broke my heart, the stilled my song,
And said they had to run along,
Explaining, so to sop my tears,
First came their parents or careers.
(15) But ever does experience
Deny me wisdom, calm, and sense!
Though she’s a fool who seeks to capture
The twenty-first fine, careless rapture,
I must go on, till ends my rope
(20) Who from my birth was cursed with hope.
A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic—
The thing’s become ridiculous
Why am I so? Why am I thus?
One Perfect Rose
-Dorothy Parker
(1a) A single flower he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
One perfect rose.
(2a) I knew the language of the floweret;
“My fragile leaves,” it said “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
(3a) Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
The Grapes of Wrath: Chapter 3
John Steinbeck
(1) The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse’s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in she’s wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an
(5) appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man’s trouser cuff or the hem of a woman’s skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement.