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NBA Socratic Seminar

I "stole" this idea from Elliot Zetzer, who teaches CCP at an all-boys school and was searching for a way to motivate his students to contribute to his discussions in a Socratic Seminar. Elliot's take was MLB, which I will include here. Currently I have a hoop in the room, so I changed it to NBA. I've found this works well when encouraging discussion of a common classroom text, such as novel, poem, article, story, etc. 


Elliot admitted his boys were motivated by their stats, which he would calculate daily. This sounded like a lot of math to me, so I adapted it to the NBA. I have a hoop in my room where we shot our disinfectant-soaked towels during COVID. 

At its best, this is what it looks like in my room - split the class into two teams, usually right down the middle. Name a team captain for each team. Flip a coin or have a shoot-off for first possession. Inbound the ball to the captain. From there they can "shoot" (speak), or pass the ball to a teammate. To avoid one person being a ball hog, you might want to make the rule that "everyone on the team must shoot once before anyone can shoot twice." The graphic below shows how I "score" contributions -

I will let students shoot the ball after they speak for a chance to win an extra point. The ball gets inbounded to the other team's captain and repeat. If you want, you can introduce a "shot clock" to stimulate discussion if it's taking too long for students to speak. 

You can dream up incentives for the winning team, All-Stars, etc. It also helps if students write before they speak.


 


Comments

  1. Mr. FitzgeraldSeptember 10, 2024 at 11:02 AM

    I love this idea. I remember thinking I should steal it a while back. I really ought to steal/tweak it. The part I dig the most is the detailed criteria for meaningful contributions to the class dialogue. I am always hesitant to define or over "ref" a discussion as it can feel inorganic. Without clear criteria though, it is easy for some students to make low effort guttural noises for contributions and for other students to Russell Westbrook-out.

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