First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Teach students how to engage in thoughtful discussions about a text. Socratic seminars are highly effective at helping students read closely and think critically about what they’ve read. They also teach students how to participate in authentic discussions. This practical book from bestselling authors Victor and Marc Moeller is your go-to guide for getting started! It will help teachers who are new at Socratic seminars and provide fresh ideas to teachers who are experienced with the format. Part I provides guidelines on how to prepare students for discussion and how to form good discussion questions. Part II includes ready-to-use lesson plans organized by compelling themes to engage students. The lesson plans include unabridged literary and nonfiction reading selections from classic and contemporary authors, as well as suggested film pairings. Authors featured in this book include... C. S. Lewis William Faulkner Abraham Lincoln Mike Royko Isaac Asimov Aldous Huxley Andrew Postman John Updike Gina Berriault Gene Siskel Judith Guest President Obama Anton Chekhov Robert Frost John Cheever And more!

Teach students how to engage in thoughtful discussions about a text. Socratic seminars are highly effective at helping students read closely and think critically about what they’ve read. They also teach students how to participate in authentic discussions. This practical book from bestselling authors Victor and Marc Moeller is your go-to guide for getting started! It will help teachers who are new at Socratic seminars and provide fresh ideas to teachers who are experienced with the format. Part I provides guidelines on how to prepare students for discussion and how to form good discussion questions. Part II includes ready-to-use lesson plans organized by compelling themes to engage students. The lesson plans include unabridged literary and nonfiction reading selections from classic and contemporary authors, as well as suggested film pairings. Authors featured in this book include... William Faulkner Gina Berriault Gene Siskel President Obama Ray Bradbury Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Kahil Gibran William Shakespeare Robert Frost William Saroyan Carson McCullers And more!

Shows how teachers can plan and implement Socratic Seminars, a strategy that is particularly appropriate for teaching in a block schedule and which leads to active learning.

The benefits and importance of Socratic seminars are widely recognized, but little has been written on how to make them happen successfully in the classroom. In Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School , author Matt Copeland provides real-world examples and straightforward answers to frequent questions. He creates a coaching guide for both the teacher new to Socratic seminars and the experienced teacher seeking to optimize the benefits of this powerful strategy. Socratic Circles also shows teachers who are familiar with literature circles the many ways in which these two practices complement and extend each other. Effectively implemented, Socratic seminars enhance reading comprehension, listening and speaking skills, and build better classroom community and conflict resolution skills. By giving students ownership over the classroom discussion around texts, they become more independent and motivated learners. Ultimately, because there is a direct relationship between the level of participation and the richness of the experience, Socratic seminars teach students to take responsibility for the quality of their own learning. Filled with examples to help readers visualize the application of these concepts in practice, Socratic Circles includes transcripts of student dialogue and work samples of preparation and follow-up activities. The helpful appendices offer ready-to-copy handouts and examples, and suggested selections of text that connect to major literary works. As our classrooms and our schools grow increasingly focused on meeting high standards and differentiating instruction for a wide variety of student needs and learning styles, Socratic seminars offer an essential classroom tool for meeting these goals.Socratic Circles is a complete and practical guide to Socratic seminars for the busy classroom teacher.

Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School Social Studies: Methods, Assessment, and Classroom Management is an exciting methods-based text that integrates appropriate management and assessment techniques with seven distinct teaching strategies. Writing explicitly for pre-service social studies teachers, veteran teacher educator Bruce E. Larson offers detailed descriptions of a range of instructional strategies, along with guidelines for deciding how and when to use each. Part I offers the foundations for teaching and learning in a social studies classroom, and explores contextual, theoretical, and policy factors that all teachers need to consider before entering the classroom. Part II delivers a range of comprehensive strategies for providing instruction that is appropriate for particular lessons, student abilities, and classroom environments. The practical strategies in Part II build upon the learning theories described in Part I, positioning Instructional Strategies for Middle and High School Social Studies to be the go-to, all-inclusive teacher’s guide to the social studies classroom. New to this Edition A list of goals before each chapter presents an overview of the chapter’s content focus, and provides an outline for the chapter review. Extensively revised Part I (chapters 1–4) provides an updated review of national standards developed for teaching history, geography, civics, and economics. In-depth applications of the Common Core State Standards for the social studies are also explored. New "Reality Check" feature provides directions for integrating field-based experiences into the chapters, and contextualizes the ideas in the book for a classroom setting. Each chapter in Part II (chapters 5–11) has been expanded to include a section labeled "Enhancing Student Learning with Technology," offering websites, links, and other resources for integrating recent technologies into the classroom. Chapters 5–11 include a new "Making Your Lesson More Meaningful for ELLs" feature, which provides ideas—based on current research and theories about learning language—for engaging ELLs, specific for each instructional strategy. Expanded discussion of the "Understanding by Design" model equips teachers to design learning experiences that promote student understanding by intentionally designing what happens in the classroom, and developing authentic formative assessments of student learning.

This bestseller describes alternatives to lecturing, traditional questioning, and individual pencil and paper tasks. It offers practical advice on how teachers can harness the potential of the extended period.

This book opens by providing the historical context of Plato’s engagement with education, including an overview of Plato’s life as student and educator. The author organizes his discussion of education in the Platonic Corpus around Plato’s images, both the familiar – the cave, the gadfly, the torpedo fish, and the midwife – and the less familiar – the intellectual aviary, the wax tablet, and the kindled fire. These educational images reveal that, for Plato, philosophizing is inextricably linked to learning; that is, philosophy is fundamentally an educational endeavor. The book concludes by exploring Plato’s legacy in education, discussing the use of the “Socratic method” in schools and the Academy’s foundational place in the history of higher education. The characters in Plato’s dialogues often debate – sometimes with great passion – the purpose of education and the nature of learning. The claims about education in the Platonic corpus are so provocative, nuanced, insightful, and controversial that educational philosophers have reckoned with them for millennia.

Deborah Rickey and Randall Wisehart have spent more than 80 years in the field of education as teachers and administrators. In The Habit of Passionate Teaching, they share what they have learned from their students in middle school, high school, and teacher preparation programs. The motivation for this book comes from the authors’ deeply held belief that it is crucial for teachers to share their knowledge about teaching (their craft knowledge) so that every generation of teachers can build on what has worked in the past. Based on interviews with dozens of experienced teachers and with the addition of their own experience, the authors describe and explore what teachers said about becoming effective and “passionate” teachers and how the practices became a habit. The teachers whose voices are shared throughout the book have found success in teaching over a span of five, ten, even twenty and more years. They have bucked the trend that has seen so many teachers leaving the profession after three years or fewer. The authors sought to discover why these teachers chose to stay in the profession. The emerging answer to the question is that these teachers learned and employed practices of passionate teachers and honed the practices until they became a habit, a habit of passionate teaching. The authors highlight the importance of practices that veteran teachers shared during interviews and focus group sessions. One practice is reflecting. Teachers reported the importance of reflecting before, during and after teaching in order to help them focus on student learning. Another practice is nurturing relationships. Teachers shared that building positive relationships with their students was an essential practice. The practice of engaging in an action research mindset was also listed as an important practice. Teachers were clear that having a question or wondering about student learning was crucial. Yet another practice is seeking the perspective of their own students in their journey to the habit of passionate teaching. Seeking the student perspective was an essential element of their teaching practice. Teachers shared how they sought and acted on the student perspective in both formal and informal ways. Finally, the practices of listening and questioning were described as being threaded throughout these teachers’ professional lives. Listening was crucial in understanding the student perspective and helped create a classroom culture that led to teachers and students being partners in learning. Questioning was described in a very specific way in the context of this book. Teachers explained the importance of asking questions they did not know the answer to as an important way to emphasize that answers lay in exploration not in the teacher’s head. Learning and employing practices of passionate teachers is not an easy process. Teacher anecdotes and examples clearly demonstrated a commitment of these veteran teachers to being lifelong learners. The teachers whose words are shared throughout this book, were clear that being a good teacher means always inquiring about what is working and what isn’t and making the necessary adjustments. This book is built around stories and insights of teachers who have made a commitment to the habit of passionate teaching. This book includes important ideas that teachers reported were key to filling them with hope and helping them understand what it means to be a good teacher. In addition, the teachers and authors share specific strategies, practices, and protocols that can be adapted for elementary, secondary, and post-secondary classrooms. This book describes the craft knowledge of the authors and veteran teachers in hopes that other educators can build on the ideas and, in the future, share their own craft knowledge.

The importance of critical thinking has surged as academics in higher education realize that many students, upon entering college, lack the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed. While much has been written regarding the ‘lack’ of critical thinking, less has been written on the success of methods implemented to develop this fundamental skill. The Handbook of Research on Advancing Critical Thinking in Higher Education explores the effective methods and tools being used to integrate the development of critical thinking skills in both undergraduate and graduate studies. Due to the difficulties associated with teaching critical thinking skills to learners of any age, this publication is a crucial addition to the scholarly reference works available to pre-service and early career teachers, seasoned educational professionals, professors across disciplines, curriculum specialists, and educational administrators.