Socratic Seminar: Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son"
Socratic Seminars provide a perfect opportunity for students to construct deep conceptual understandings of texts and to actively participate in their own learning. Participation in this type of activity promotes critical and creative thinking as students build on others' ideas, refer to the given text , ask questions, and give their own opinions.
Even though this type of activity is more common in middle and high schools, I have begun training my fourth and fifth-grade Enrichment students in the process with very positive results. Students have let me know in their reflections that they enjoyed the opportunity to really talk about the literature in a meaningful way. Even if they come to the discussion with difficulty understanding all of the text, participation in the seminar has often really clarified things for them.
I have chosen to use the Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son" for a Socratic Seminar. In order to prepare for the seminar, give out copies of the poem the day before. In addition, provide some open ended question guidelines that may help get the discussion flowing, such as:
- What puzzles me is…
- I'd like to talk about…
- I'm confused about…
- This makes me think of…
- Do you agree that the poet is trying to say…
- What might have happened if…?
Students should come to class prepared with the text and five open- ended questions for the seminar.
After the seminar, you might focus on the poet and his character. If possible, access clips from YouTube of various people performing the poem. Discuss how seeing and hearing the reader speak, and his/her personal interpretation of the words on the page might change the way they feel and think about the poem. Extend this to other examples of different mediums for storytelling, such as movie/television versions of books.
In closing, students will reflect on the seminar before they leave, completing a "3-2-1 Exit Ticket", asking them 3 things they learned, 2 things that they see differently than before they participated in the seminar, and 1 thing they still wonder about.
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