Lesson 1: What is Speaking? What is Listening? How are they similar? Lesson 2: How do people speak so others can understand? Lesson 3: What is active listening? Lesson 4: What is the purpose of a question? Do different types of questions have different purposes in a discussion? Lesson 5: Practice Asking and Answering open questions and elaborating answers using sentence stems Lesson 6: Student led questions support understanding of text through conventions and word choice Lesson 7: Student led questions support understanding of text through conventions and word choice Lesson 8: Student led questions support understanding of text through conventions and word choice Lesson 9: Student led questions support understanding of text through conventions and word choice Lesson 10: Introduction/Creation of Rubric for Speaking and LIstening Lessons 11: Introduction and Practice with Socratic Circles Lessons 12: Practice with Socratic Circles Lessons 13: Practice with Socratic Circles Lessons 14: Practice with Socratic Circles Lesson 15: Watch Socratic Circle: Give Feedback to Whole Group/Culminating End of Unit Activity Standards: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion). Ask questions to check understanding of information presented, stay on topic, and link their comments to the remarks of others. Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion.
T: I hope you enjoyed hearing the whole text all put together. Does anyone have any thoughts they’d like to share today? It can be either about the book or about your understanding of the book or this process. S: (respond) T: Great! Now we are going to watch ourselves engaging in a Socratic Circle. Then, we are going to score ourselves as a WHOLE GROUP using the Speaking and Listening Rubric. The whole group engaged in the discussion so the whole group will work together! T: (Shows video)(May give students rubric while they watch OR display rubric near the video) Teacher and students then engage in discussion about each part of the rubric. Encourage students to use evidence in the video by using sentence stems to share thinking. “I believe we are a 3 on ______ because in the video I saw ___________.” T: (starts debrief) We will be holding Socratic Circles to discuss text many more times this year. This was your very first week of using this structure! Turn and talk to a partner about how this discussion helped you understand this complex text. (Teacher may have students share out.) T: The goal for the end of 3rd grade is that you all can run the Socratic Circle without me leading it. We will be working toward independence during each Socratic Circle. Notes: Since the goal of this unit is for students to have respectful discussions with others around complex texts and topics. The culminating activity addresses the fact that the Socratic Circle is a class discussion and grades the whole class on their work. You MAY decide to make this more of an individual assessment and have students self-assess on their rubric and you assess when turned in. Either way gives valuable feedback to all. Once these structures (Turn and talk and Socratic Circle) are in place, they can be used for ANY kind of discussion. Turn and talk works well in any subject and Socratic Circle can be used with nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and any kind of complex text. Usually the text is short (able to be read in one day) and the Circle can be used as a weekly literary discussion.
Using Guided Reading Groups to Scaffold a Grade Level Text See following document for an explanation for giving students support with grade level text. The section on guided reading starts on page 8 of the document. To provide ALL students access to the texts used in this unit, consider using your guided reading (small group instruction) time to scaffold the text and support these readers. In the unit, we call for students to close read sections of the texts. Both My Rotten Read Headed Older