Hi all, This year I am teaching an Academic Support class and I want to incorporate Socratic Discussion. Things are pretty set up, except for the texts. I have 75 minute periods, and can only devote one day to the activity. And, I cannot give the students homework at this school. Therefore, any reading and responding to text must be done in class, on the day of the discussion. I am looking to plan it out as follows: 30 minutes to read the article, make some annotations, and write down some level 2-3 questions they want to ask in the discussion. 20 minutes for discussion A (half the class) 20 minutes for discussion B (other half of the class) and 5 minutes for leeway and wrap up. My problem is, I'm having difficulty finding texts they can read (in 15 minutes) and have things to talk about. This is a 9th grade class but they are lower performing (that's why they are in this class). I've searched "short articles", "short news articles" "short interesting articles", yahoo news, etc. But, I'm just not really finding any good readings. They can't be too long because the students only have 30 minutes to both read and respond to the article. Any ideas or particular articles or texts suggestions? Thank you all in advance!!!
You might find articles from Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week. He keeps an archive here: http://www.kellygallagher.org/aow-archive When I googled: "Paired Informational Texts" I landed on several sites like this http://www.readworks.org/rw/6th-8th-stem-passages-paired-literary-texts Something there might get you started. I get a lot of use out of this text: http://www.heinemann.com/products/E03087.aspx
Newsela.com has pretty good articles that you can actually change the lexile level of if you want them to be shorter.
Thanks! Thank you for all the ideas! The newsela was great and really is a wonderful source. It looks like you can adjust to SRI scores so that is a nice bonus. Good length, sensible topics, and at their level
Is there a reason you can only have one day for an activity? I've found it better to let them read, take notes, and make questions one day, then review their notes and discuss the next day. It gives them time to thoroughly read, to process the information twice, and plenty of time to discuss. Also, look at broadcasts from NPR. They have transcripts you can print and students can listen and take notes on while the audio plays.
