Socratic Seminar Bundle Discussion Slides, Handouts, Graphic Organizers, Rubrics
Socratic Seminar Bundle Discussion Slides, Handouts, Graphic Organizers, Rubrics: In this engaging Socratic seminar bundle, your students will analyze multiple perspectives, engage in meaningful discussion, and develop their reasoning skills through the critical examination of 12 high-interest topics. This bundle includes everything you need to facilitate structured, student-led Socratic seminars in your classroom. Each of the lessons begins with a short video to hook students and introduce them to the topic, followed by a presentation that guides the discussion. Detailed teacher instructions, student handouts, and sentence stems ensure all participants understand the process and feel confident contributing. To help students prepare, each lesson includes a thought-provoking article with multiple perspectives, a guided graphic organizer for tracking their thoughts, and a rubric for assessment. Whether you’re introducing Socratic seminars for the first time or refining students’ discussion skills, this resource provides everything you need to engage your students in rich, structured conversations.
Topics Included in This Socratic Seminar Bundle:
- Impact of AI: Will AI make our world better or worse?
- Freedom or Safety: Which is more important: freedom or safety?
- Flying Cars: Will flying cars ever exist?
- School Start Times: Should school start times be later in the day?
- Animals in Zoos: Should animals be kept in zoos?
- Social Media: Should we capture life on social media or live in the moment?
- Animal Cloning: Should we clone endangered animals?
- Sports Age Limits: Should there be age limits for certain sports?
- Mars Exploration: Should humans travel to Mars?
- City vs. Country: Is it better to live in the city or country?
- Social Media Age Restrictions: Should we have age limits on social media?
- Junk Food in Schools: Should schools ban junk food?
Each Socratic Seminar Includes the Following Resources:
➡️ Detailed Socratic Seminar Teacher Instructions: Comprehensive guides to running a Socratic seminar, including step-by-step instructions, classroom strategies, and tips for facilitating a meaningful discussion.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Presentation Slides: Each topic includes a 22-slide PowerPoint presentation (264 slides in total) that walks you through every step of introducing the Socratic Seminars. It includes an overview of the Socratic seminar process, discussion norms, an introduction video, key vocabulary, prompts for each step of the process, round-robin discussion questions, sentence stems, and a structured debrief to close out the lesson.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Introduction Videos: Short, hand-drawn videos by John Spencer from Spencer Education accompany each of the Socratic seminars to hook students and encourage them to consider the prompt from multiple perspectives and angles.
➡️ Introduction Video Transcripts: Written transcripts of the introduction videos, ensuring all students can access the content while preparing for the seminar. This is especially useful for students who are hard of hearing or benefit from reading along.
➡️ Classroom Posters: Each topic includes an eye-catching poster designed to spark curiosity and engage students before the discussion begins. Display it on your classroom door or a prominent space in the room to set the tone for each lesson.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Student Informational Handouts: Detailed informational handouts that introduce students to the seminar process and expectations. It also includes sentence stems to help students start conversations, show agreement, disagree respectfully, add information, clarify, connect ideas, and reflect.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Articles: Each topic includes a thought-provoking article that presents various perspectives on the subject, helping students build background knowledge before the discussion. Each article also includes pre-reading vocabulary and academic terms with definitions to support comprehension.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Graphic Organizers: Structured organizers that allow students to reflect on the reading, formulate their personal stance, and anticipate opposing viewpoints before the seminar begins.
➡️ Socratic Seminar Debrief Response Sheet: A response sheet for students to complete after each Socratic seminar. They will analyze how the conversation unfolded, assess their participation, consider new ideas that emerged, and evaluate the overall group dynamics.
If you like this, you’ll love our creative writing bundle:
>>> Creative Writing Video Bundle
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The videos and resources in this resource are for single-classroom use and are not to be uploaded to the Internet in any format without permission from the creators. Please contact prestoplans@gmail.com if you require more information.