Seminars
The rules of Paideia are as following: no raising your hand, no interrupting, stay on topic, refer to the text, listen to the speaker, sit in a circle, and be sure to participate in the conversation. The end goal of Paideia is to produce critically thinking student, who isn’t afraid to ask questions or to speak. This is a far cry from the rote memorization approach that the government promotes. --Muir student
Differentiation Activity: Paideia Seminars
Paideia education has given Muir school a new magnet focus. Through projects and seminars, our school is attracting and keeping many GATE students.
Strategy
Thinking and Speaking in Paideia Seminars
Core Content Standard from “Written and Oral English Language Conventions”
Students write and speak with a command of standard English conventions appropriate to the grade level.
Differentiated Content: Paideia seminars are collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated by open-ended questions about a text. The goal of Paideia seminar is for students to expand their understanding of ideas and values within the curriculum. The Paideia seminar nurtures both intellectual and social skills. Assessment and evaluation of Paideia seminar occurs through pre and post seminar tools and processes including self-identified goals, discussion, and writing.
Seminar Strategy: Seminars are actually done in three steps. Seminars begin with pre-seminar activities. Students review the selected seminar text for a few days before the seminar. They set their own goals for the seminar. The seminar itself begins with identification of main ideas from the text, then moves to focus or analysis of textual details, and closes with personalization and application of ideas from the text. Post seminar activities often include writing and evaluation of the seminar. Participation goals may be the following:
- To speak at least three times
- To focus on the speaker
- To ask at least three questions
- To refer to the text at least twice
- To take notes on others’ comments
- To say “I want to build on…” in reference to another’s comment
- To say “I agree with..” in reference to another participant
- To say “I have a question about…” in reference to another participant’s comment
Resources: Seminars take up about 10% of instructional time in Paideia education. Another small amount of time is devoted to didactic instruction. The main activity of a Paideia school is coaching of projects. The following three-column plan illustrates a simple unit and shows how the seminar supports the lesson.
Didactic 10-15% |
Coaching 70-80% |
Seminar 10-15% |
Needs of animals—water Property of solids—weight Property of liquids--buoyancy |
Observe |
Ideas: Seminar text: Aesop’s fable, |
Product
Paideia seminars meet requirements for excellence in GATE education. When Muir School adopted Paideia philosophy, all teachers at our school site were trained in techniques for Paideia seminars. We have school-wide seminars more than once a month. The coached projects include standards, and the seminar activity takes lessons beyond the standards.
Through Paideia seminars, students venture more deeply into areas of study, they draw connections between subjects, and they construct meaning in a personalized manner. In this way, they meet GATE requirements for depth, complexity and novelty. The texts used for our seminars in grades seven to twelve have been often out-of-grade-level materials, including this year an essay by Emerson on nature and Malcolm X’s letter from prison. Paideia seminars definitely help GATE students relate to others, as they learn civil discourse as part of each seminar. Our goal is for GATE students to lead seminars.
What is Paideia?
Paideia is something that normally you wouldn’t find in a school because in some ways goes in the opposite way. Instead of the teachers talking and doing all the explanation, the students have to actually think about the information given and try to explain to their classmates what the writer is saying on that piece. Another uncommon thing that teachers do is tell the students to avoid raising hands to speak because they supposed to be discussing and sharing their ideas without any interruptions.
You may think that is crazy to let your students just talk, but at the same time it lets the students be free and share their ideas without thinking if what they think is right or wrong, it makes them more confident about what they are saying.
I’ve learned a lot in all those seminars maybe sometimes the texts are not that fun for us, but having English as my second language, it gave me confidence to express what I think without worrying if they are going to say something because of my accent or because I couldn’t make a word sound right. --Muir student