Week 12 Student Teaching

Using My DIY Project

One of my project for the Penn State Agricultural and Extension Education 495 course is to complete a DIY project of professional development. I was fortunate enough to be notified of an awesome source of professional development within my placement school. Mrs. Sheffer is a member of the Paideia National Board Council, and she was willing to train me in a Paideia practice called Socratic Seminars.

Socratic Seminar

1. Provide the students with a challenging text for them to analyze and form opinions on, prior to the seminar.
2. Read the pre-seminar script, which includes:
• Setting a class goal, developing goal, and one achieving goal from the goals provided.

1. Students participate in the seminar through active listening and contributing discussion's rooted from the text provided. 


• During the seminar students are working towards achieving their goals, such as talking twice, actively listening, not talking while others are, using quotations from the text, etc.
• The teacher's role is to facilitate the discussion by posing open ended questions, which can be opinion, analytical, or other types.
• Additionally, the teacher notes the flow of discussion and what is contributed by which students on their "map."
  
2. Read the post-seminar script, which includes:
• Completing the Paideia's Reflection Paper
• Giving themselves a letter grade for their progress toward achieving their goals.
• Ranking the class on a 1-10 scale for how well the seminar went.
3. The next day, students are asked to write a response to the Socratic Seminar and what was discussed.

My Experience

The socratic seminar was used in my small animal science class during the "animal rights versus animal welfare" unit. The text we provided was The Ethics of Animal Research, which was challenging to my students. 

To aid my students who had difficulty reading the text, I read out-loud, and paused at the end of each paragraph to allow time for them to highlight if they agreed or disagreed with the statements. Additionally, students were asked to research terms they weren't comfortable with or examples of animal testing.

During the seminar, 5 students dominated the discussion. Our class goal was to speak voluntarily at least twice. I began the seminar with a round robin question, which all were required to answer, "What percentage of the statements in this research article do you agree with?" Which transitioned into my opening question, "Our class is evenly split, 8 of 16 people say that they agree with 50% or more of the statements in the article, what quote made you agree or disagree with the idea of animal testing?"

Other Questions asked included:

• What is your interpretation of the statistics in paragraph G from GP Net.com.
• What do you think of the UK's Home Office Publishing anonymous animal research projects in paragraph I?
• Closing: How do scientists implement the 3R's (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement) of the use of animals in research?

Question for you: How can I encourage students to speak more openly? My training suggested calling on specific students in a way that gives them a second to think. Such as: "Luke, I see you agreed with 70% of the statements in the paper, what do you feel about the quote from paragraph H that states..."