One of the most disheartening moments in teaching is asking a question, seeing a hand go up, and hearing, “Can I go to the bathroom?” We’ve all experienced discussions that fall flat—questions met with silence or, just as often, the same few students carrying the conversation while everyone else listens. Even when those students have insightful things to say, discussion can start to feel less like inquiry and more like performance.
I was really excited when I first heard about Socratic seminars. At first, I used them occasionally because I wasn’t sure students could sustain a full period of discussion. After a few successful attempts, I began integrating seminars more regularly into my teaching. At the time, I assessed student learning primarily through participation grades.
Over time, I noticed that students seemed to compete to participate, and they didn’t try to invite quieter students into the conversation. Discussion became more about how much students could say than what they might learn. I started to realize that the problem was how I was structuring—and grading—discussion.
Grading participation didn’t work for me because I wasn’t measuring what students were really learning. Instead, it rewarded students who were louder, more confident, or quicker to respond. Students who were quieter, multilingual learners, and those who needed more time to process were often left out.
I started thinking about the rubric I was using. One section focused on a written reflection students completed after the seminar. I enjoyed reading these reflections because they revealed a great deal about what students were learning. I realized how much intellectual work listening really was, and students who were quieter during discussion often shared the most insightful explanations of how the seminar influenced their thinking.
What if the whole grade focused on the reflection? What if, instead of grading how often students spoke, I focused on how they were thinking?
I decided to rethink how I assessed Socratic seminars. Before a seminar discussion, I use the Question Formulation Technique to help students create questions for the discussion. Students plan for the seminar by taking notes on their initial thinking about the question and gathering evidence.
On the day of a seminar, I give students a few minutes to gather their thoughts, look over their notes, and mentally prepare. Then the students lead their discussion. Inevitably, they find a rhythm and share facilitation duties. I track the students’ discussion using Equity Maps. I rarely intervene; I don’t even look directly at students during discussion, because they tend to start talking to me instead of each other.
After the discussion, I assign the reflection, which is typically due the next class period. Students focus on key ideas raised in the seminar, their responses to peers’ comments, and how their thinking changed.
When I stopped grading participation and started grading reflection, seminars changed. The seminars encouraged deeper thinking and made space for more voices. Students shared that they felt less pressure and were able to be more fully present and listen because they were not worried about making enough comments. They no longer had to perform participation. Instead, they just did it. The discussions felt more meaningful.
A few years back, I had a really interesting discussion about grading participation with a class after two students advocated for a participation grade. They were both very comfortable in discussion and high performers. In the conversation that followed, they realized that all the other students preferred being graded on their reflections. As one student shared, “I don’t see why we should get a grade for something that is just expected.” In the next seminar, the two students advocating for a participation grade opted to listen rather than speak. Both of them shared in their reflections that being quiet felt awful. What a learning experience! And they never would have learned it had they not been free to take that risk.
You might be thinking that if you don’t grade participation, students won’t participate. I understand that concern, but there are several ways to support engagement. Start by giving students space to generate their own questions. Tools like the QFT help students invest in discussion because their questions are centered.
Reassure students that a few moments of silence mean people are thinking. Students (and teachers) are often uncomfortable with silence, but if you wait, students will find their way back into the discussion.
I have also found that students are invested in seeing their feedback from Equity Maps, so I share parts of the discussion report that Equity Maps generates. They find it really interesting to see how the discussion flowed, and I always show them their equity quotient, the number of speakers relative to how much each person speaks. Inevitably, students want to see that equity score go up. Last year, a student even talked me into giving the class a pizza party if their equity score rose to the highest tier. While I didn’t wind up having to pay for pizza, I would have been happy to—either way, the students were focused on ensuring all voices were valued.
In addition to using Equity Maps and the QFT, I started using other tools to support this approach to seminars—graphic organizers for students and reflection prompts in an easy-to-replicate template.
If you’re interested, I’ve put those materials together into a Socratic Seminar toolkit you can use or adapt in your own classroom. The toolkit includes discussion structures (full-class, fishbowl, and small-group), student prep and reflection tools, a simple tracking system, and a rubric focused on thinking rather than participation. You can take a look here if it’s useful.
Seminars feel completely different now that I focus on thinking instead of participation. Students are still engaged, but they leave more space for quieter voices and have become more comfortable letting the discussion breathe. Their reflections show how much they value the learning happening in discussion.
A few months ago, a student told me seminars were her favorite part of class—and that she especially liked listening to others’ ideas. Recently, after a discussion, one student simply said, “That was fire.”
