SS Reflection

     The socratic seminar influenced my thinking about the book 1984 by George Orwell by showing different sides of the narration. One thought from the seminar that I had not thought about before in so much depth was a comment made by one of my peers. They said that when Winston was writing in his diary he was taking a risk of losing his life or losing his mind. I thought that this was an interesting concept because the more I thought about it the more it made sense. If Winston had or hadn't started writing in his diary eventually he would loose his life anyway because he would loose his mind from not being able to express his feelings.   

     During the Socratic Seminar, a statement said by Ryan brought up a lot of emotional appeals. She talked about todays sensitivity to violence versus the people in 1984. We were all able to build off of that and we had a nice discussion on that. I didn't find a statement I disagreed with, which could be a possible readjustment to the socratic seminar. 

     One thing that worked well during the seminar was utilizing a discussion leader.  I was the discussion leader for my group and I think that it really worked. I tried to make sure that people were able to talk and make appeals and I tried to keep the discussion on track. Another part that worked efficiently was having a half time. Although my partner was rarely there, the half time break seemed to be beneficial to the other students in the seminar.

A way in which the seminar needs improvement is the amount of questions that each person gets to ask.  I felt as if some people got to ask two or three of their questions while some people did not get to ask any.  Some of the people I talked to had really good questions that I think they would have liked to share but they were not given the time to share those questions because other people took up time by asking more than one of their questions.