Critical Thinking Activity High School Reading Comprehension Socratic Seminar

Ready to revolutionize the way your students learn? Tired of battling plagiarism and quick-fix essay generators like ChatGPT? We've got the solution!

Introducing innovative Socratic Seminar, Annotation, and Visual Essay tools - designed specifically for ELA middle and high school students.

⭐Reduce cheating and plagiarism

⭐Spend less time marking essays and more time giving helpful feedback

⭐Capture students’ ideas more effectively and engage them in learning

⭐Help your visual learners understand concepts

⭐Create happier and more engaged students

⭐Save the weekends for your family and friends

These aren't just alternatives; they're upgrades! Transform the reading comprehension process into an engaging journey of discovery. Foster critical thinking skills and reading comprehension, encourage genuine understanding, and cultivate a lifelong love for learning.

What's included in this bundle?

▶️Instructions for teachers and students for all three products
▶️Student examples for all three products
▶️Information on literary terms and rhetorical devices
▶️Socratic Seminar cards and suggestions on outer circle activities
▶️Rubrics
▶️And more - see more detail below

150 pages and 26 Slides

Let's empower our students to think critically, not copy mindlessly

❤️❤️❤️What teachers are saying:

"This product is beautiful, user friendly, and well thought out. Provided me with just the guidance I needed to complete a project for my advanced placement sophomores." -Gene B. ️️️️️

"Like many of us, I have spent a fair amount of money on resources for TPT products. Some purchases have been just OK and some are serious game changers. This product is a serious game changer. The Socratic Seminar protocol and visual notes are accessible to all kids of different learning abilities." -Ramon T." ️️️️️

OVER 20% discount

✺✺ANNOTATION & CLOSE READING

amazing examples, instructions for teachers and students

Using a yellow highlighter has become an annotation staple for high school students. Is this the best way to mark up a textbook or novel? Studies have shown that highlighters hinder retention and comprehension. Simple highlighting encourages a passive reading style rather than an active one. Students do not engage critically with the text when annotating with a simple highlighter. They are trying to absorb it all without really understanding it. So what is the alternative? A better way to annotate is to try my Interpretive Note-taking/Annotation, where a series of suggestions prompt students.

This close reading/annotation product encourages students to take annotation to the next level. This assignment is perfect for assessing their reading comprehension and students retain what they learn. I find this assignment rewarding for my students – a helpful way to study, a unique assignment, and a way to engage visual learners. I am always surprised by their work. A final bonus is that my students’ grades increased by 30% after using this assignment when preparing for exams.

Use with any text and includes student examples.

CUSTOMER COMMENTS ON MY ANNOTATION PRODUCTS:

• When I explained that this annotation style can/will replace compositions at times throughout our year, my sophomores actually cheered! But truthfully, this is really helpful. I find kids using the techniques in other content area classes.
• This is my new favorite annotation go-to!
• I'm really enjoying this annotation resource with my seniors and I believe it will be very helpful to them when they transition to college.

INCLUDED IN THIS PRODUCT ARE THE FOLLOWING:

✺ 18 INDIVIDUAL PROMPTS IN SLIDES AND PRINT.

✺ 18 GROUP PROMPTS IN SLIDES AND PRINT.

✺ 26 LITERARY TERMS OR RHETORICAL DEVICES LISTED AND DEFINED IN SLIDES AND PRINT.

✺ INSTRUCTIONS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS.

✺ 15 PAGES OF STUDENT EXAMPLES! Examples are from my own classes with permission. I find examples help students understand your expectations. The examples are from Genesis One, Two, and Three, and Alexander Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard.” I have used this poem for several years and the results were outstanding.  My students worked on The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as well as the poem. The poem is included here, but it is not factored into the price. 

✺ A link to file for students to use interactively through Classroom™ or other online programs.  

✺ Editable instructions for students when using the interactive version.

✺ Information on Google Slides™ for teachers and students.

✺ POPE’S “ELOISA TO ABELARD” IS INCLUDED WITH LINE NUMBERS. 

The poem is a perfect text to annotate! It is here for convenience’s sake. It is not factored into the price.

ANNOTATION BOOKMARKS ARE NOW ADDED:

✺ ONE BOOKMARK IN FOUR DIFFERENT COLORS, and in black and white, with 13 literary terms or prompts with symbols.

✺ FOUR BOOKMARKS with images and sayings from President Obama, Malcolm X, Taylor Swift, and Oprah Winfrey. In color and black and white.

✺ FOUR colorful bookmarks with generic sayings. In color and black and white.

✺ ONE BLANK BOOKMARK in three colors, and black and white. Use these bookmarks to create your own terms and symbols, or give them to your students and have them create their own.

✺ TWO BONUS BOOKMARKS: one with critical points and one for comparing two texts.

⚫⚫INCLUDED IN THE VISUAL ESSAY PRODUCT ARE THE FOLLOWING:

Visual essays offer a refreshing, creative outlet for students to showcase their knowledge and understanding, making them ideal post-testing and end-of-the-year activities. They perfectly combine critical thinking with artistic expression, ensuring a meaningful, engaging, and unique experience for students to demonstrate their learning.

Moreover, cheating has unfortunately become an ongoing issue in students’ education. With the development of essay generators like ChatGPT, it is too easy for students to acquire quick and plagiarized essays. The visual essay is a great alternative.

Research has shown that visual aids stimulate learning and help students process, organize, and understand information more effectively. Visual essays, in particular, can facilitate complex ideas and new ways of thinking, leading to higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Moreover, visual essays prepare students for the real world by developing their visual and communication skills, which are essential in various professional fields. On top of that, they are a perfect way to teach figurative language, as this assignment works best with texts that employ figurative elements.

INCLUDED IN THIS PRODUCT:

⭐ NEW: Guide to Teaching Visual Essays

⭐ NEW: Visual Essay Assignment Instructions for teachers and students

⭐ NEW: Difference between One-Pagers and Visual Essays

⭐ NEW: Interactive version of Visual Essays

⭐ NEW: Detailed write-up for a Visual Essay on Nietzsche, along with the image

⭐ NEW: Example of how students demonstrate understanding of philosophical concepts through visual representation

⭐ Detailed Rubric

⭐ Information on ChatGPT and AI essay generation is the new reality 

⭐ Student examples—I use student examples from previous semesters to help my class understand my expectations. I have included 12 examples from my lectures on various Great Books: Nietzsche, Plato, and Thucydides. I have some TpT products that cover the same or similar material used during my lectures for these projects—see the last slide for details. 

⭐ Two amazing examples from a teacher in Florida.

⭐ Seven examples of visuals done during a Socratic Seminar.

⭐ Images from the library display at my University. This year, I was asked to give a talk on Visual Essays at my University’s event, Celebrate! Teaching and Learning (“an event for faculty, staff, and students to share significant moments, or sources of inspiration, from their teaching and learning experiences at the University”). 

⭐ Information on Google Slides for teachers and students

→→INCLUDED IN THE SOCRATIC SEMINAR PRODUCT ARE THE FOLLOWING:

▶️ FOUR PAGES OF TEACHER NOTES/INSTRUCTIONS 

▶️ FOUR RUBRICS

▶️ 10 SEMINAR CARDS IN SLIDES, PRINT, AND AS 4X6 TASK CARDS.

▶️ FOUR POST-SEMINAR CARDS IN SLIDES, PRINT, AND AS 4X6 TASK CARDS.

▶️ EDITABLE INSTRUCTIONS FOR STUDENTS IN GOOGLE SLIDES.

▶️ LINK TO PLATO’S APOLOGY. This is an excellent translation, and it includes line numbers.

▶️ SEVEN PAGES OF STUDENT EXAMPLES! These are examples of answers from a seminar on Plato’s Apology and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

▶️ 10 PAGES OF STUDENT EXAMPLES! These are examples of annotation and the assignment I have the outer circle doing during the Seminar.

▶️ A link to file for students to use interactively through Classroom™ or other online programs.  

▶️ Editable instructions for students when using the interactive version.

▶️ Information on Google Slides™ for teachers and students.

The ELA Common Core State Standards require students to learn how to read texts carefully:

“As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century. Indeed, the skills and understandings students are expected to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.” English Language Arts Standards | Home | English Language Arts

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All rights reserved by author Permission to copy for single classroom use only Electronic distribution limited to single classroom use only

Please remember that any of the products that you download from my store are my copyrighted property and licensed only for you to share with your direct students. If another teacher wants to use these same products, they will need to purchase them directly from my TpT store, or you may purchase an additional license for them. None of my products may be shared online. Posting of my copyrighted materials may happen only in a password-protected environment, such as Google Classroom, and accessed only by your students. Posting on public websites (WordPress, Blogger, Facebook Groups, etc.) is strictly prohibited.