I have decided to do my project on two over-arching KY Core Content Standards, and show the ways in which the activity I am doing with my students meets the indicators for the standards. The standards are:
A. Interpreting Text: High School Reading
*Requires readers to extend their initial impressions to develop a more complete understanding of what is read. This involves linking information across parts of a text as well as focusing on specific information.
B. Reflecting and Responding to Text: High School Reading
*Requires readers to connect knowlesge from the text to their own background knowledge. The focus is on how the text relates to personal knowledge.
My activity is called Socratic Circles, and as you will see in my Flickr project, it is set up to encourage discussion and debate among students and to push them toward using higher level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. This activity specifically meets several of the indicators for these standards in the following ways:
1. RD-11-3.0.2: Students will analyze an author's purpose in a passage.
In this activity, I assign a short passage or several short poems for the students to read for homework. They are to apply six techniques of analysis to the reading, including: question, analyze, evaluate, elements of the passage, connect (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to world), and argue. The students them present this information to their class members when it is their turn to speak in the inner circle.
2. RD-11-3.0.4: Students will accept or reject an argument, giving supporting evidence from the passage.
The students who are speaking in the inner circle often debate with one another when they discuss the arguments they have prepared for homework. They have a copy of the passage/poem in front of them so that they can support their argument with text.
3. RD-11-4.0.1: Students will evaluate the content or make connections as it applies to students' lives (text-to-self), real-world issues (text-to-world), or other texts (text-to-text).
By asking the students to make connections that go beyond the text itself and the author, students synthesize a ton of information, bringing it together to share with their peers. Students often pull from research on the author or the text, their notes/experiences in classes such as Social Studies or Science, and even connect to their own lives in very personal ways.
*Requires readers to extend their initial impressions to develop a more complete understanding of what is read. This involves linking information across parts of a text as well as focusing on specific information.
B. Reflecting and Responding to Text: High School Reading
*Requires readers to connect knowlesge from the text to their own background knowledge. The focus is on how the text relates to personal knowledge.
My activity is called Socratic Circles, and as you will see in my Flickr project, it is set up to encourage discussion and debate among students and to push them toward using higher level thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. This activity specifically meets several of the indicators for these standards in the following ways:
1. RD-11-3.0.2: Students will analyze an author's purpose in a passage.
In this activity, I assign a short passage or several short poems for the students to read for homework. They are to apply six techniques of analysis to the reading, including: question, analyze, evaluate, elements of the passage, connect (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to world), and argue. The students them present this information to their class members when it is their turn to speak in the inner circle.
2. RD-11-3.0.4: Students will accept or reject an argument, giving supporting evidence from the passage.
The students who are speaking in the inner circle often debate with one another when they discuss the arguments they have prepared for homework. They have a copy of the passage/poem in front of them so that they can support their argument with text.
3. RD-11-4.0.1: Students will evaluate the content or make connections as it applies to students' lives (text-to-self), real-world issues (text-to-world), or other texts (text-to-text).
By asking the students to make connections that go beyond the text itself and the author, students synthesize a ton of information, bringing it together to share with their peers. Students often pull from research on the author or the text, their notes/experiences in classes such as Social Studies or Science, and even connect to their own lives in very personal ways.
For more information on this activity, please visit http://www.stenhouse.com and type in "Socratic Circles".
The book, by Matt Copeland, is available on this website, and you can read a chapter or two online for free.
Here is a link to my images, which are a combination of found images and actual photos of the classroom setup for Socratic Circles:
1 comment:
I also love socratic circles. I look forward to seeing one in action from an observer standpoint (I have participated, but not solely observed).
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