3rd Period Topics:
Topic One: MAGA Hat teen vs. Native American elder
- CNN Article on Catholic teen in MAGA hat and his interaction with an older Native American Man. Both sides describe the incident and teen explains why he doesn't owe an apology. Short videos included. Click HERE to read.
- Fox News editorial by Tucker Carlson. Discusses how the situation was taken out of context and distorted to make the boys from the school look 'guilty' when in reality, they didn't do anything wrong. Click HERE to read.
- CNN article on the charges against a nurse at an adult care facility charged with impregnating a woman who was a patient. Click HERE to read.
- CBS article on the resignation of the CEO of the care facility where a comatose woman was impregnated by a nurse. Click HERE to read.
5th Period Topics
Topic One: Treatment of families at the Southern border- NO ONE SENT ME ANYTHING
New Topic One: MAGA Hat teen vs. Native American elder
- CNN Article on Catholic teen in MAGA hat and his interaction with an older Native American Man. Both sides describe the incident and teen explains why he doesn't owe an apology. Short videos included. Click HERE to read.
- Fox News editorial by Tucker Carlson. Discusses how the situation was taken out of context and distorted to make the boys from the school look 'guilty' when in reality, they didn't do anything wrong. Click HERE to read.
- CNN article on the charges against a nurse at an adult care facility charged with impregnating a woman who was a patient. Click HERE to read.
- CBS article on the resignation of the CEO of the care facility where a comatose woman was impregnated by a nurse. Click HERE to read.
Topic One: MAGA Hat teen vs. Native American elder
- CNN Article on Catholic teen in MAGA hat and his interaction with an older Native American Man. Both sides describe the incident and teen explains why he doesn't owe an apology. Short videos included. Click HERE to read.
- Fox News editorial by Tucker Carlson. Discusses how the situation was taken out of context and distorted to make the boys from the school look 'guilty' when in reality, they didn't do anything wrong. Click HERE to read.
- CNN article on the charges against a nurse at an adult care facility charged with impregnating a woman who was a patient. Click HERE to read.
- CBS article on the resignation of the CEO of the care facility where a comatose woman was impregnated by a nurse. Click HERE to read.
Step 1: Choose an article
For Socratic Seminar, we will debate 2 current event articles in class for 15 minutes each. You will have to compose 2 thought-provoking discussion questions (using the question stems below) per article and bring those in with you the day of the seminar.
Follow these guidelines when choosing an article:
1. Choose a current event article that has been published online in the last 30 days; if it is earlier than one month ago today, it is no longer current.
2. Stay away from articles about marijuana or abortion; those two topics have been debated for so long that there isn't much left to talk about. In addition, recent events in our Buford community are off-limits for this assignment.
3. Choose an article that the vast majority of your class will be able to discuss; if it is something that only appeals to you, the debate will crash & burn.
4. Choose an article that has many different discussion points and can be discussed from multiple points of view; if there is only one overwhelming majority opinion, it is not a good article. (i.e. Boston Marathon Bombing--nobody would argue that was a good thing to happen.)
5. Find articles on websites of reliable news outlets. Do NOT go to any website like www.debate.org; it must be an article with context, not simply people's opinions. Below are some sample websites:
Step 2: Thoughtfully/Critically read
Simply reading and saying 'I got it' will not do for this assignment. I encourage you to read your text multiple times. For reads 2 and 3, you should have paper out and be taking notes.
Read One: Cold read (meaning reading something you've never read before). Read through the articles to get a sense of what the
topic is and how the authors feel about the situation. Odds are, the articles will have different opinions. As you are reading each
article, try to be open minded about what each author is saying.
Read Two: Read to establish your own opinion. Read through BOTH articles again. What does each author say that you agree
with? What does each author say that you disagree with? Which author do you agree with the most?
Read Three: Read for evidence. Now that you know what you agree/disagree with, find evidence that supports your own opinion
about the topic. What does the author say that makes you think 'Yes!- I totally agree with that'.
Step 3: Summarizing the debatability
Article Summary:
When you have found and read a debatable article, you will write a short summary of the article. In order to ensure that your article is debatable, you should also include a short summary that highlights WHAT IS DEBATABLE about your topic. Include evidence from your article to support your ideas. These summaries are turned in to be assessed, and they will factor into your grade.
Please type your responses. MLA format is expected.
Consider the following questions:
- Who was mentioned in the article?
- What issue was discussed?
- What did you agree with that you read?
- What did you disagree with that you read?
- Where did you find your article?
- When was it written?
- Who was it written by?
At this point, we will present our ideas to the class and narrow our topics down to TWO that the entire class will research.
Step 4: Fill out a 'Current Events' packet
To help you organize your thoughts, have your articles out while you fill out your packet. Consider how working with others who read the same article might help you generate some new ideas! Your goal should be to complete this packet BEFORE your debate. Be sure to include information on BOTH topics/articles in this packet.
Step 5: Generating questions for debate
You need to research BOTH topics for your class (see list below) and develop an opinion that you can defend. You may take notes to guide your discussion on Monday, but you need to be prepared to discuss your topic at length. You will not know what topic you are assigned to debate until you arrive in class on Monday. Be prepared to discuss both. Your grade depends on it.
Use the sentences below to help you guide questions...
Below you will find a variety of sentence starters for your Socratic styled questions; use them at you see fit.
Socratic Seminar Question Stems:
As you prepare your questions for the Socratic Seminar, consider using these question stems to help you develop critical thinking questions instead of just comprehension questions.
You will need to come up with two questions per article topic (all posted on google classroom). Once you create your questions, you need to answer each question in 4 - 5 sentences. Doing so will provide you with questions to ask your classmates, as well as potential responses should someone else ask a question similar to one of yours.
Good luck!
Clarification Questions:
- What do you mean by ?
- What is your main point?
- How does relate to ?
- Could you put that another way?
- What do you think is the main issue here?
- Let me see if I understand you; do you mean or ?
- (classmate 1), would you summarize in your own words what (classmate 2) has said?... (classmate 2), is that what you meant?
- Could you give me an example?
- Would this be an example: ?
- Could you explain that further?
- Could you expand upon that?
Questions About the Initial Question or Issue:
- How can we find out?
- What does this question assume?
- Would put the question differently?
- How could someone settle this question?
- Can we break this question down at all?
- Is the question clear? Do we understand it?
- Is this question easy or hard to answer? Why?
- Does this question ask us to evaluate something?
- Do we all agree that this is the question?
- To answer this question, what question would we have to answer first?
- I’m not sure I understand how you are interpreting the main question at issue.
- Is this the same issue as ?
- How would put this issue?
- Why is this question important?
- Does this question lead to other questions or issues?
- ASSUMPTION PROBES
- What are you assuming?
- What is Erika assuming?
- What could we assume instead?
- You seem to be assuming . Do I understand you correctly?
- All of your reasoning depends on the idea that . Why have you based your reasoning on
rather than ? - You seem to be assuming . How would you justify taking this for granted?
- Why would someone make this assumption?
- Are these reasons adequate?
- What would be an example?
- How do you know?
- Why do you think that is true?
- Do you have any evidence for that?
- What difference does that make?
- What are your reasons for saying that?
- What other information do we need?
- Could you explain your reason to use?
- Can you explain how you logically got from
- Do you see any difficulties with their reasoning here?
- Why did you say that?
- What led you to that belief?
- How does that apply to this case?
- What would change your mind?
- But is that good evidence to believe that?
- Is there a reason to doubt that evidence?
- Who is in a position to know if that is so?
- What would you say to someone who said ?
- Can someone else give evidence to support that response?
- By what reasoning did you come to that conclusion?
- How could we find out whether that is true?
Origin or Source Questions:
- Where did you get this idea?
- Do your friends or family feel the same way?
- Has the media influenced you?
- Have you always felt this way?
- What caused you to feel this way?
- Did you originate this idea or get it from someone else?
Implication and Consequence Probes:
- What are you implying by that?
- When you say , are you implying ?
- But if that happened, what else would happen as a result? Why?
- What effect would that have?
- Would that necessarily happen or only probably happen?
- What is the probability of this result?
- What is an alternative?
- If this and this are the case, then what else must also be true?
- If we say that this is unethical, how about that?
Viewpoint Questions:
- You seem to be approaching this issue from perspective. Why have you chosen this rather than that perspective?
- How would other groups/types of people respond? Why? What would influence them?
- How could you answer the objection that would make?
- What might someone who believed think?
- Can/did anyone see this another way?
- What would someone who disagrees say?
- What is an alternative?
- How are (classmate 1) and (classmate 2) ideas alike? Different?
Topics for Socratic Seminar #1:
3rd period: Police race relations (Dallas police shooting)
Customer rights vs. business owner rights (Sushi consumption at all-you-can-eat buffet)
5th period: 3D printing of guns, should this be allowed? (3d printing with no regulations)
Censoring freedom of speech (Nevada political candidate 'crime for crime' policy, college campus
leadership censoring free speech)
6th period: Should victims have a say in sentencing of criminals? (Elizabeth Smart case)
Should DNA evidence be required to seek the death penalty?