Sunday, September 2, 2007

Using Tokens to Prevent Students From Dominating

Distribute an equal number of tokens (plastic poker chips, pennies, Cheerios, etc.) to each participant. Five tokens per person works well. Inform participants that they are to place one token aside for each comment they make. Essentially, members are paying for the privilege of contributing verbally to the dialogue. Once they have "spent their tokens", participants must remain as active listeners until the facilitator invites everyone to start again with five tokens.

Students tend to become more reflective once they realize their comments are worth a price. And, facilitators can visually see and make note of reticent participants. However, Socratic Seminars are not designed to force members to verbally contribute. Students will contribute when they are ready. Meanwhile, they are learning while engaged as active listeners. Therefore, please reassure participants that they do not have to "spend" all, or any, of their tokens.

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