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Curriculum Thinking About Thinking October 2016 | Elul-Tishrei 5777
Community Engineer & Researcher
Juda and Maria Diener Lower School | Samuel and Henrietta Scheck Middle School | Ben Lipson Upper School
LION’S SHARE
Welcome to Lion’s Share: Scheck Hillel Community School’s Grade 6-12 bulletin covering news about curriculum, college counseling and our community. Connect with the names, faces and initiatives that make Scheck Hillel a college preparatory school that develops global citizens with enduring Jewish identity and values. For more school information, please visit eHillel.org.
Curriculum
Question like Socrates, Study Like Hillel
Making better thinkers takes expert guidance and ancient methods
Who is responsible for Owlet’s death? When Craig Michalski’s Grade 6 English students recently arrived for class, the desks had been rearranged and an odd question hung on the board: “Who is responsible for Owlet’s death?” A Socratic seminar was about to unfold: an experience designed to promote an open-minded approach to analytical thinking. Michalski staged the seminar methodically, first guiding students toward a common definition of the term “responsibility,” then reading Owlet’s story in the book Why Mosquitoes Buzz in Peoples’ Ears: A West African Tale.
How often do students think about thinking? Reflecting on thinking is a common practice at Scheck Hillel. Lion’s Share visited two classrooms to find out how teachers cultivate this important skill and how students respond.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Talmud Rabbi Shlomo Sprung plays music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young before his Beit Midrash Talmud class, perhaps to help his students transition into the right mindset. Talmud study requires accessing text on three levels: reading the Aramaic legal text, translating the words and understanding the ideasand contradictions-behind them. Students have embraced the intellectual challenge. Nathalie Assor (Grade 11) describes the thinking process as “logical reasoning from the Rabbis that can be applied in life.” Because Talmud study is a cumulative process, students must use past learning to generate explanations and grasp meaning. Saul Birmaher (Grade 9) describes the experience as “reading between the lines and going deeper into text.” Rabbi Sprung’s questions are incisive, but his students don’t shy away from testing hunches and interpretations. “Students know they need to be open-minded, but that all pieces have to fit together. It’s like playing legal Sudoku,” he concludes.
Students shared their responses to the Owlet question, struggling at first to adhere to the seminar’s strict discussion parameters, but later monitoring, and often revising, their own thinking.
Student Reflections: What worked and what didn’t in the Grade 6 Socratic seminar: “We got better answers and replaced the old ones. We had a shift in our thought.” –Samuel Attias “My opinion didn’t shift because I had very good reasons as to why the monkey was responsible for Owlet’s death. I think everyone is responsible for their own actions.” –Jamie Kurzer
In the end... Thinking about thinking is one of the most advanced forms of learning—it happens when students reflect not on what they know, but on how they’ve come to know it. The Socratic seminar and Talmud study help students become flexible, curious and disciplined thinkers, qualities that are critical for college and career success.