Socratic Seminar: Humanities 12, Quarter 1
- Description of Assignment / Work:
In my Humanities class, we did a Socratic seminar. In a Socratic seminar, we get into groups of 6-7 students and present then discuss claims that we come up with. The claims usually consist of one claim pertaining to something relating to content from class. And the other claim(s) are about pretty much anything that we want to discuss, within reason, of course. For this Socratic seminar, we had to come up with one claim about human evolution or ancient foraging communities and one claim about anything we wanted. My first claim was “Traditional foraging and hunting communities were more sustainable and community-based than modern-day mass farming,” and my second claim was “The USA should adopt the metric system and get rid of the imperial system.” - What are you most proud of from this assignment, and why?
I was most proud of the fact that I was able to present my point well during the discussion and include those who weren’t as involved. Part of the socratic seminar is looking out for the others in your group and making sure that everyone is adding to the discussion, so I was happy that I could help with that. - What was most difficult about completing this task?
It was difficult not to interrupt people. It is a flowing and moving discussion, so it was a bit hard not to bud in with my own point when someone else was making theirs. - How could you improve this work? If you could start over, what would you do differently?
There isn’t much that I would’ve changed, but if I had to, I probably would’ve changed my second claim. I thought that my second claim was kind of boring. - How does this relate to what you have learned in the past? How can you apply this to future learning?
I’ve had class discussions before, but not in a way where we can just keep it going in an effective and constructive way. I think that I’ll have to do these types of discussions in college, so doing small ones is helpful. - Which 21st Century Skill do you feel this assignment addresses, and why? How did you develop and/or improve upon your 21st Century Skill with this assignment?
For this assignment, I feel like the 21st-century skill that fits best is communication skills. For this assignment, we had to share our views as well as understand and process other people’s views in the group. For the Socratic seminar, we had to communicate using our voices as well as written points. We had to support our claims and talk about other people’s claims in an effective way.