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A great explanation of how to teach young people by asking questions instead of telling.

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Gary Cranston

The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school.

learning Questions

Gary Cranston

The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school.

learning Questions

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Marco Díaz Calleja

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I believe that a demonstration of a method that can teach
such a difficult subject easily to children and also capture their enthusiasm
about that subject is a very convincing demonstration of the value of the
method.
This was to be the Socratic method
in what I consider its purest form, where questions (and only questions)
are used to arouse curiosity and at the same time serve as a logical, incremental,
step-wise guide that enables students to figure out about a complex topic
or issue with their own thinking and insights.
21 more annotations...
- Many
  of the questions are decided before the class; but depending on what answers
  are given, some questions have to be thought up extemporaneously. Sometimes
  this is very difficult to do, depending on how far from what is anticipated
  or expected some of the students' answers are. This particular attempt
  went better than my best possible expectation, and I had much higher expectations
  than any of the teachers I discussed it with prior to doing it.
- I had therefore
  already established a certain rapport with the students, rapport being
  something that I feel is important for getting them to comfortably and
  enthusiastically participate in an intellectually uninhibited manner in
  class and without being psychologically paralyzed by fear of "messing up".
- This method takes
  a lot of energy and concentration when you are doing it fast, the way I
  like to do it when beginning a new topic. A teacher cannot do this for
  every topic or all day long, at least not the first time one teaches particular
  topics this way.
- I did this fast. I personally
  like to do new topics fast originally and then re-visit them periodically
  at a more leisurely pace as you get to other ideas or circumstances that
  apply to, or make use of, them. As you re-visit, you fine tune.
- The chief benefits of
  this method are that it excites students' curiosity and arouses their thinking,
  rather than stifling it. It also makes teaching more interesting, because
  most of the time, you learn more from the students -- or by what they make
  you think of -- than what you knew going into the class.
- It is
  a very efficient teaching method, because the first time through tends
  to cover the topic very thoroughly, in terms of their understanding it.
  It is more efficient for their learning then lecturing to them is, though,
  of course, a teacher can lecture in less time.
- It gives constant feed-back
  and thus allows monitoring of the students' understanding as you go. So
  you know what problems and misunderstandings or lack of understandings
  you need to address as you are presenting the material.
- Further, by quizzing and monitoring their understanding as you go along,
  you have the time and opportunity to correct misunderstandings or someone's
  being lost at the immediate time, not at the end of six weeks when it is
  usually too late to try to "go back" over the material.
- Or you can tell them you will get to exactly that in a little
  while, and will answer their question then. Or suggest they might want
  to think about it between now and then to see whether they can figure it
  out for themselves first.
- Gifted kids may have additional
  insights they may or may not share at the time, but will tend to reflect
  on later. This brings up the issue of teacher expectations. From what I
  have read about the supposed sin of tracking, one of the main complaints
  is that the students who are not in the "top" group have lower expectations
  of themselves and they get teachers who expect little of them, and who
  teach them in boring ways because of it.
- The point is to try to stimulate
  and challenge all students as much as possible. The Socratic method is
  an excellent way to do that. It works for any topics or any parts of topics
  that have any logical natures at all. It does not work for unrelated facts
  or for explaining conventions, such as the sounds of letters or the capitals
  of states whose capitals are more the result of historical accident than
  logical selection.
- Of course, you will notice
  these questions are very specific, and as logically leading as possible.
  That is part of the point of the method. Not just any question will do,
  particularly not broad, very open ended questions
- And it forces the
  teacher to think about the logic of a topic, and how to make it most easily
  assimilated.
- It
  emphasizes student understanding, rather than teacher presentation; student
  intake, interpretation, and "construction", rather than teacher output.
- These are the four critical
  points about the questions: 1) they must be interesting or intriguing to
  the students; they must lead by 2) incremental and 3) logical steps (from
  the students' prior knowledge or understanding) in order to be readily
  answered and, at some point, seen to be evidence toward a conclusion, not
  just individual, isolated points; and 4) they must be designed to get the
  student to see particular points.
- Therefore you have to know or to be able to find out what the students'
  ideas and beliefs are. You cannot ask just any question or start just anywhere.
- It is crucial
  to understand the difference between "logically" leading questions and
  "psychologically" leading questions. Logically leading questions require
  understanding of the concepts and principles involved in order to be answered
  correctly; psychologically leading questions can be answered by students'
  keying in on clues other than the logic of the content.
- There is no magic formula for doing this, but one of the tests
  for determining whether you have likely done it is to try to see whether
  leaving out some key steps still allows people to give correct answers
  to things they are not likely to really understand.
- Further, in the case
  of binary numbers, I found that when you used this sequence of questions
  with impatient or math-phobic adults who didn't want to have to think but
  just wanted you to "get to the point", they could not correctly answer
  very far into even the above sequence. That leads me to believe that answering
  most of these questions correctly, requires understandingof the topic rather
  than picking up some "external" sorts of clues in order to just guess correctly.
- Further, when they are logically understanding
  as they go, they tend to say out loud insights they have or reasons they
  have for their answers
- Finally, two of the interesting,
  perhaps side, benefits of using the Socratic method are that it gives the
  students a chance to experience the attendant joy and excitement of discovering
  (often complex) ideas on their own. And it gives teachers a chance to learn
  how much more inventive and bright a great many more students are than
  usually appear to be when they are primarily passive.

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The point was to demonstrate the power of the Socratic method for
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Martin Lindner

The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school.

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Students do not get bored or lose concentration if they are actively participating. Almost all of these children participated the whole time; often calling out in unison or one after another. If necessary, I could have asked if anyone thought some answer might be wrong, or if anyone agreed with a particular answer. You get extra mileage out of a given question that way. I did not have to do that here. Their answers were almost all immediate and very good. If necessary, you can also call on particular students; if they don't know, other students will bail them out. Calling on someone in a non-threatening way tends to activate others who might otherwise remain silent. That was not a problem with these kids. Remember, this was not a "gifted" class. It was a normal suburban third grade of whom two teachers had said only a few students would be able to understand the ideas.

The topic was "twos", but I think they learned just as much about the "tens" they had been using and not really understanding.

This method takes a lot of energy and concentration when you are doing it fast, the way I like to do it when beginning a new topic. A teacher cannot do this for every topic or all day long, at least not the first time one teaches particular topics this way. It takes a lot of preparation, and a lot of thought. When it goes well, as this did, it is so exciting for both the students and the teacher that it is difficult to stay at that peak and pace or to change gears or topics. When it does not go as well, it is very taxing trying to figure out what you need to modify or what you need to say. I practiced this particular sequence of questioning a little bit one time with a first grade teacher. I found a flaw in my sequence of questions. I had to figure out how to correct that. I had time to prepare this particular lesson; I am not a teacher but a volunteer; and I am not a mathematician. I came to the school just to do this topic that one period.

I

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Tom McLeod

A good example of the Socratic method effectively played out in a classroom, as well as a discussion of its use.

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A transcript using the Socratic method to teach about binary numbers

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Craig Rettig

The experiment was to see whether I could teach these students binary arithmetic (arithmetic using only two numbers, 0 and 1) only by asking them questions.

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