Reading Matters Winter 2019

that it takes time to be in love?” (PST 16). The questions centered on what love meant to students and if they could relate to the different types of love the poets portrayed in their poems. This PST chose three very different poems about love. The PST worked hard through questioning to have the students evaluate the type of love in the poems and how those types of love are alive and well today in the students’ very own high school. The text-to-self questions worked to help students negotiate their personal feelings and experiences with the very complicated emotion of love. Prior to the discussion PST 17 held, students completed a WebQuest on McCarthyism. The discussion started with what students learned in the WebQuest. “How did McCarthyism affect Arthur Miller? You can go! . . . It was in your WebQuest” (PST 17) and then moved to the motivations of the characters in the play The Crucible . “What did they blame their behavior on and how did they try and save themselves from being witches?” (PST 17). The PST finished the discussion with a comparison of the play to the McCarthy trials and how the play was an allegory for the McCarthy trials. “So, here’s the definition of allegory. It’s a story, a poem, a picture, that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning or message. So, it can be a moral or political one. So, do you think The Crucible is an allegory?” (PST 17). This PST was the one teacher that asked text-to-text questions for the majority of the seminar. The PST wanted students to understand that the play was an allegory for Miller’s own experiences of being accused in the McCarthy trials with little evidence. Given the WebQuest completed the day before, the goal to help students understand allegory, and how Miller’s play was an allegory, the text-to- text questions dominating the seminar were appropriate. the themes represented in And Then There Were None. “… if someone commits a crime and then comes forward about it after, should they be found guilty for that?” (PST 18) Some questions were about confession and if someone confesses, should that be taken in account when issuing a punishment for crimes? Many of the questions revolved on responsibility for actions, taking punishment into your own hands, and then pursued the roles of the jury system in punishing offenders. “So then do you think that if there is one person that is biased in a jury then that they can change everyone else’s mind?” (PST 18). The majority of the questions in this discussion were text to world. Very little were text to text. All of the questions revolved around the themes in the Christie text and how the students’ world experiences related to that. The PST’s focus was to get students excited about reading the novel. The discussion PST 19 held had questions that focused on the main themes in To Kill a Mockingbird and why Atticus would take a case that he knew he could not win. “…If you know there’s no way to win at something, and it could be anything, if you know there’s no way to win, should you even make the attempt? Should you even try? And think about the video we just saw. They talked about how that lawyer went into it” (PST 19). There were also questions about vigilantism and if there was a place for that in PST 18 held a discussion about why people commit crimes and the consequences for those crimes. The questions reflected

a civil society. “Should vigilante justice ever be allowed? Do y’all know what “vigilantism” is?” (PST 19). All of this PST’s questions were text to world. The PST was trying to help students reason out how remarkable Atticus was for being willing to stand up against his community and try a case that he could not win and would cost him in reputation. The seminar would help them see that doing the right thing is worth the while, even when others do not appreciate your efforts. These themes would be encountered in future chapters. The PST wanted them to understand what remarkable choices Atticus would make in these chapters. This personal connection was the tool that this PST chose for that goal. Discussion From the analysis of the transcripts, the PSTs wanted students to be excited and think deeply about the text. These teachers made many clarifying comments, encouraging students and explaining details. A different choice that the PST’s could have made during the seminar was to let students clarify, discern, and debate the issues and spoken only when asking a major question or redirecting students if they became off topic. Socratic seminars give the students the opportunity to have their own voice reflected in the classroom which makes them vested members of the learning process. This ownership leads to the benefits of increased attention and higher confidence in their learning (Mee, 2007). In order for them to take ownership, they must claim the floor. Higher Order Thinking Most of the PSTs had students discussing text and themes using higher order thinking 33-50% of the time during their discussions. As teachers we must consider how we make our questions very clear so that we do not spend time clarifying. How do we help students use higher-order thinking so they are evaluating, analyzing, and creating new ideas about reading? As teacher educators we need to discuss how to prepare questions that result in higher order thinking with our preservice teachers. In the Socratic seminar, we have the opportunity to have open discussion about large ideas and themes. With Socratic seminar, we provide adolescents a chance to demonstrate intellectual independence and the opportunity to practice authentic discussion that leads to increased self-awareness (Loan, 2003). As teachers, we can structure the discussion so that students have the occasion to practice higher-order thinking and discussion during most of the Socratic seminar. Text Connections In the cases examined in this study, PSTs asked questions that were designed to get students excited about the text itself and the themes the text contained. Socratic seminars are a great vehicle to help students relate to the text. Students can share common experiences, like television reports and current events, and individual experiences to help motivate them to read the text. Polite & Adams (1997) remind us that Socratic seminars that revolve around students’ lives and experiences are more interesting to students and yield higher participation in the seminar. These seminars had students talking.

Reading Matters Research Matters

| 34 | Reading Matters | Volume 19 • Winter 2019 | scira.org

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