DAY 10

Integrated Social Emotional (ISEL) Lesson Plan:

FAHRENHEIT 451​ SOCRATIC SEMINAR

Teacher Thinking… Students and Teacher doing…

Lesson Plan Element: Integrated Social Emotional Objective & Student SEL Objective
What academic content am I Academic Content:
going to cover? What SEL Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that
skill(s) will I focus on? How probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of
can I create social emotional positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas
experiences to help students and
mediate the content? conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.
What kinds of personalized (CCSS: SL.11-12.1c)
objectives am I hoping
students will create? Present information, findings, and supporting evidence,
conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can
follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives
are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and
style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal
and informal tasks. (CCSS: SL.11-12.4)

SEL Skill: Relationship Skills

➢ Communication → communicating clearly, listening
actively, cooperating
➢ Social Engagement
➢ Relationship Building

By allowing students to share their thoughts on the novel and also

to hear their peers’ thoughts, I am hoping that this summative
assessment will be both a positive experience for students as well
as a meaningful one. Instead of answering traditional test
questions or writing an essay to be only read by me, the students
will be demonstrating their knowledge and understanding while
engaging with and exercising the opportunity to participate in
intellectual endeavors with others: something not granted to the
characters in ​Fahrenheit 451​ and one of the major lessons I hope
students take with them.1

1
“​Montag’s hunger for the nourishment in books helps students understand why they should read, and his rebellion
against the anti-intellectual dictates of his society imbues the passive act of reading with a seductive ‘subversive’
cachet” (Trout, 2001, p. 3).

How can I engage the
students and invite their
voices into the room? What
interpersonal skill can we
incorporate and how might I
connect that to the academic
content we will cover
today?
Inclusion Activity
Students will be participating in smaller group discussions as well
as a whole class discussion during the Socratic Seminar.2
The smaller groups for the first part of the Socratic Seminar are
designed to help engage students more and invite their voices into
the classroom because the smaller groups allow for less
competition for speaking time. Students may feel like they have
more opportunities to share out and meet the requirements for
participation easier when less students are participating in the
discussion at once.

Students will be exercising the interpersonal skills necessary to

conduct a productive and respectful discussion with their peers:
communicating clearly, active listening, and resolving any
conflicts that may arise when disagreements are had. These
interpersonal skills ultimately speak to some of the major
concepts we have been discussing throughout the study of this
novel: celebrating diverse perspectives, accepting individual
opinions, and inviting lively debate.3

Body of Lesson with Engaging Practices

How am I promoting SEL? I am promoting SEL by giving students the opportunity to
Where can we draw upon practice their effective communication skills through the sharing
each other’s experiences to of their ideas and building of knowledge together during the
make meaning? Socratic Seminar. Students will bring with them to the discussion
not only their prepared materials that consist of both textual
Does my lesson meet the evidence and personal reflection, but also their own prior
following criteria: experiences and narratives.4

The activity promotes high
engagement, meaning
students are present and
participating.
The way I run Socratic Seminars promote high engagement in a
number of ways:
-By splitting the class into two groups, students do not have to
compete for talking time so much. This reduction of stress will
encourage students to share out more.
-Requiring that students fill out the Peer Observation handout
while they are in the outer observation group, holds students

2
​Walsh-Moorman (2016); Tredway (1995)
3
“Such dialogue permits participants to consider other ways of interpreting and to view the individual selves within
the class community as interwoven. The participants, and thus the community itself, are open to difference,
empathy, awareness, and change. In this environment, students learn to treat literature in ways that enrich their
personal development, critical thought, thinking abilities, and understandings of social differences and
connectedness” (Langer, 2011, p. 65).
4
Connelly & Clandinin (1988); Dewey (2015)
Students collaborate with accountable and promotes engagement even when they are not in
others for at least part of the the group that is currently discussing.
time. -Bringing the whole class together at the end not only allows
students to discuss with peers who were not part of their smaller
There are moments for group, but it also creates an environment that the students are
creating, evaluating, used to, so they may be more comfortable sharing in this setting.
reflecting, and sharing.
Socratic Seminars are very collaborative as the participants must
Students are moving about work together to keep the conversation going. Students have to
for all or part of the activity exercise effective, respectful communication skills and engage in
rather than being active listening for the seminar to be successful.
sequestered in desks.
Throughout the process, students are participating in moments of
Brain breaks are provided to creating​ when they prepared for the discussion prior to this class
process information, make session, ​sharing​ during the discussion as they share their ideas
connections, and increase with the group, ​evaluating​ throughout the seminar as they are
transfer. confronted with their peers’ ideas who may contradict their ideas
or build on them in new ways, and ​reflecting ​at the end of the
seminar and as they leave class. Often, the ideas presented during
seminars will resurface in future classes as students continue to
work through the material on their own in an informal way.5

There are three transitions during the Socratic Seminar that

provide students with the opportunity to move and get a small
brain break.

Optimistic Closure
How will I have students At the end of class, I will thank students for engaging in such a
reflect on their learning in great discussion. I will point out that by participating in
an engaging way? How will intellectual conversations, like the one we had today, is how we
they capture their thinking combat a reality like the one we read about in ​Fahrenheit 451.​
and allow me to formatively Being able to formulate your own ideas, share them, be open to
assess their learning? Where new ways of thinking, and engaging in civil discussion are all
can they make connections extremely important skills not just as students, but as citizens of
between the academic/SEL the world.6
content and their lives? How
will we look ahead to
what’s to come?

5
​“...literature becomes a way to look beyond things as they are to seek new and potentially enriching
perspectives….It permits us to become more thoughtful, and more informed members of this world​—in bother
literature and in life. It becomes an essential part of how we reason and understand” (Langer, 2011, p. 9).
6
This idea speaks to one of my main goals with this unit: “Not only will the text being studied in this unit help
students become informed citizens, but the methods used for the engagement with the text should also support
giving students an active citizen’s role” (Johnson, Element 5b, p. 3).
 Looking ahead at what is to come, I will tell students how our
next unit will piggy-back off of this one, and they will be reading
the banned book of their choice7 and creating a project for it that
presents information about the book and what would be lost if
this book were censored. Moving forward, we will continue to
consider the concepts presented in ​Fahrenheit 451​ throughout the
rest of the year.

Notes:
Time and Space: ​94 min; For the Socratic Seminar, desks will be arranged in two circles facing
inward; the desks in the outer circle will be placed directly behind each desk in the inner circle.
For the last part of the discussion, the desks will be rearranged into one large circle with the
desks facing in to accommodate a full class discussion.
Materials: ​ Constructive Conversation Skills handout, Socratic Seminar Rubric, Socratic
Seminar Peer Observation handout
 
Logistics/Ops

Materials:​ Constructive Conversation Skills handout, Socratic Seminar Rubric, Socratic

Seminar Peer Observation handout
Space:​ For the Socratic Seminar, desks will be arranged in two circles facing inward; the desks
in the outer circle will be placed directly behind each desk in the inner circle. For the last part of
the discussion, the desks will be rearranged into one large circle with the desks facing in to
accommodate a full class discussion.

Activity Time Description: What will I do? What will students do?
Review: How can I formatively assess that students met the
learning targets while getting them to capture their thinking?

Journal 0 min There is no journal today so we can maximize our discussion

time.

Socratic 80 min ● We will arrange the desks into two circles facing inward;
Seminar the desks in the outer circle will be placed directly behind
each desk in the inner circle.
● Students will gather their materials for the Socratic
Seminar (novel, Socratic Seminar Preparation
Assignment, journal, Annotation Assignments (Parts
I-III), classroom assignments, and any additional notes
they may have.

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Morgan (2013)
 ● Students sitting in the inner circle will discuss first while
the outer circle listens and fills out the Peer Observation
handout for the student sitting directly in front of them.
Only students in the inner circle may speak. Students in
the outer circle should make notes of questions they have
or comments they would have made. A discussion leader
will be designated (via volunteering) who will help to
keep the conversation going when it lulls, keep the
groups on topic, and encourage others to share out. ​(25
minutes)
● After 25 minutes, the groups will switch. (The students
from the outer circle will take the place of the student
sitting directly in front of them, and the students in the
inner circle will take the place of the student directly
behind them.) The new inner circle will now discuss
while the new outer circle fills out the Peer Observation
handout for the student sitting directly in front of them.
They should also make notes of any questions they have
or comments they would have made. A new discussion
leader is designated. ​(25 minutes)
● For the remaining discussion time, we will come together
as a whole class. The desks will be rearranged to make
one large circle. This is an opportunity for students to
bring up the questions and comments that came to them
while they were in the outer circle and could not share
out. ​(25 minutes)
● Students will turn in their Socratic Seminar Preparation
Assignment, Peer Observation handout, and any
additional notes they took, stapled together.
(5 minutes allotted for transitions)

Briefly 5 min Our next unit will be a shorter unit that piggy-backs off of our
introduce current unit. Our Banned Books Unit8 will involve the reading of
Banned Books a choice novel (from the provided banned books list) and a
Unit multi-modal project that informs on the novel you have chosen
and takes the ideas we explored in ​Fahrenheit 451 ​out of the
classroom and out into the world.

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Griffiths (2016)
Homework 1 min Look over the Banned Books list, do some research, and discuss
with your parents/guardians what might be a good choice for our
Banned Books Unit.