Socratic Circle Anatomy Discussion

A technique that was suggested to me last year was the Socratic circle.  If you haven't heard of this, it's basically a class discussion technique that is very student centered, with teacher as occasional facilitator and the children leading the chat.  It is supposed to foster both literacy and content knowledge skills in a more authentic way because they're engaging in discussion and thought where they relate back to the original source that had the information.

We've already done several activities with bone at this point - we've learned and quizzed over compact and spongy bone (along with the femur dissection here), learned the differences between the axial and appendicular skeleton, bone shapes, and names for bone surface markings.  Thursday we did the Bone Forensics Lab mentioned here, where students determine differences between male and female skeletons and predicted height from femur and humerus length.  We've most recently read several articles or selections from books, and our culminating activity will be this Socratic circle discussion.

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I have guidelines typed for the students, which we go over together as a class.

1. Be prepared for the discussion.  You can't be a successful participant unless you're familiar with the texts.
2. When you speak, address the other students, not the teacher.
3. Refer to the texts and mention where you found the information that supports your idea.
4. If you don't understand what another student means, ask a question.
4. It's okay to say "pass" if you have nothing to say.
5. Don't raise your hand, simply take turns speaking.

I also realize that since this is the first time many students have participated in this way, they may need some prompting.  I provide them with these prompts, but in the past I found they only needed them at first.  Once they got going they used their own ideas.

What did you mean by _____________?
I believe ________________ because ____________.
In the text I read ________________________.
I disagree with _____________ because __________.

The texts my students are reading for this discussion are

Written in Bone  by Sally M Walker (we chose Chapter 2 "Who Are You?")
Can We Predict Height? by Robert H Shmerling
Distribution of Lengths in the Normal Femur and Tibia in Korean Children from Three to Sixteen Years of Age by Jeong Hyun Ha

The reason I chose these texts is because they related to the topics we'd covered in class, they were interesting to read, and they represent three different difficultly levels.

The reading levels of the texts are grade 11, 14, and 17 respectively according to the Fleisch-Kincade method.  I think offering texts at different levels allows all students to participate regardless of ability, and offers enrichment for all students to be exposed to the harder texts.

When situating the room,  you can choose from a few ideas.  I'm planning on using one big circle, as my class has 18 students, so it's pretty small.  If I were using this technique with my class of 29, I would do two circles, one inside the other and have the students switch from inside to outside halfway through the discussion.  You can have students on the outside act as "notetakers" recording the ideas that are presented and noting things they'd like to add to the conversation.  You can also split the class into two discussion groups, but this offers some challenges to grading and facilitating.

When grading the conversation, you can mark the names of the students in the boxes, and then record their interactions with a code.  Some suggested marks are

RT = reference to text
O = expressed opinion
C = comment
RC = repeated another's comment
Q = asked a question

Obviously, you can tailor this to your needs, but it's a good starting point.  I took the discussion as a "classwork" grade, and required at least three comments/responses to earn full points.  You can ask for more or less comments per class depending on the size of your group.

Lastly, my discussion went quite smoothly in the past when I've written specific "Guiding Questions" for the students to discuss.  Like any conversation, sometimes it really flows and doesn't need any prompting, while other times the kids need a new topic to start the conversation again.  I aimed for two open ended questions per reading, and one finale question that allows students to discuss what they found most interesting or thought provoking in the texts.  I think seven quality questions will be enough to last the whole period.

The first time I tried this technique I was nervous... but I found the hardest part was NOT participating in the discussion myself!  The kids did a great job, and it's definitely worth a try.