Blog Post 8: Reflection on Week 7 Class

Class discussion focused on how to best build a book club setting and concluded with an experiment in the Socratic Seminar setting. While I think that our small group discussions could have been extremely beneficial if all of us had read different articles, my first group all read the same readings for the week. This led to a consensus about how Socratic Seminars are constructed and what those guidelines might look like, but we did not have a good discussion on how those ideas might contrast with book clubs until we merged into larger groups. I think that this took a bit from the understanding we could have reached due to the lack of cohesion I think the small groups of two or three allow over the slightly larger groups. Still, I found the entire exercise helpful in working out some of the thoughts and ideas I had had in my own reading experience.

The group discussion culminated into a discussion of what all of our thoughts yielded into a group document. Comparing that to a previous year’s ideas, I found, was helpful to see how different groups of people understand these instances of learning differently. This was also a good way to introduce how to build the types of questions that may be asked in these settings. With the use of examples, these ideas were further enhanced.

I found the exercise of the Socratic Seminar to be the most useful though, as it provided an example of what our projects could result in. As an observer, I found it interesting to see how the inner circle interacted with one another. It also provided me with even more ideas that both supported the thoughts I had on the reading and contrasted with some of the things I noted. These observations were extremely helpful, I feel, for understanding the reading on an even higher level.

Author: West Virginia Raven K

Student. Traveler. Lover of Knowledge. View all posts by West Virginia Raven K