PIA #2 Socratic Seminar Final Reflection

PIA #2 Socratic Seminar Final Reflection

          The seminar we held in class on Friday made me think differently about certain questions and answers on PIA #2.  I found that with the feedback of several different people, the questions in the PIA could be interpreted in various ways.  Many of my classmates also made valid points on how answer choices different from the ones I chose could be supported by the text.  For example, for the Jane Eyre story, some students argued that “justice is blind” was a good theme for the story because there was no justice to Jane’s situation.  One thing said during the seminar which I hadn’t thought of was how poor nutrition could be a social problem.  I argued that the social problem highlighted in the Jane Eyre excerpt was poor parenting, but a point was made that poor nutrition could possibly work, since nutrition of kids today interferes so much with the government.  I felt that the seminar made we see certain parts of the PIA in a different light.

          The statement made by one of my peers that I agree with the most was that the MLK and FDR speeches both talked about the supervision of certain aspects of government.  I thought this was the correct answer because the MLK speech talked about how certain individuals are usually the ones who cause trouble while groups can be trusted.  The FDR speech talked about how certain people in government have been selfish wrongdoers and have proposed the lending of more money in their favor.  Therefore, both talked about how certain people in government must be supervised.  The statement made by my peers that I agree with the least was that the best Jane Eyre story summary was one that included her losing her temper and fighting John.  I disagreed with this statement because although she does lose her temper, Jane never tries to physically fight John.  She is the one who is bullied throughout the story.  If I had the opportunity to add something to the seminar, I would have mentioned that I did not understand one park of an excerpt from the MLK speech.  I did not have time to say this because we moved quickly along the MLK questions to get to the Jane Eyre questions.

          Something that worked really well for the seminar was participation and use of evidence from the text.  In some seminars, there can be awkward pauses in the conversation, but I thought that the seminar on Friday flowed very smoothly, despite the fact that we basically only talked about the Jane Eyre questions.  Except for maybe one or two students, everybody participated in the seminar and contributed their answers.  Another positive factor in the seminar was the use of evidence from the text.  Almost every person who participated included either direct or indirect quotes to support why they chose a certain answer.  I thought that overall, this seminar was the best one yet.

          Since the seminar went very well, there were few things that needed improvement.  I thought the biggest problem, as usual, was the lack of asking questions.  Although asking a question to the group was one of the requirements to get full points, only three of four people in the seminar did it.  Another problem was lack of preparation, although this problem was very minor.  During the seminar, I observed some students who had not written evidence next to their answers or had not completed the assignment at all.  However, this seminar was surprisingly the most entertaining and insightful one I participated in all year.