Ms Davis’s seventh graders were getting ready to engage in a Socratic Seminar at the end of this novel-based unit. After reading the memoir Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang, Ms. Davis helped students construct high-level questions to prompt application, analysis, and/or evaluation to be used in the seminar discussion.

Students were provided language for academic discussion through sentence frames and sentence starters. These are referenced in their notebooks. Students also utilized their group members as resources to engage in high-level and content specific discussion. The teacher also utilized prompts and metacognitive questions such as “where did you get that information?” and “can you defend your answer?”

Students were seated in groups where they were able to collaborate with peers who shared their same home language or target language. Since this is a dual language school with a Spanish/English and a French/English strand, students could use their full linguistic repertoires to make meaning.