The Socratic Sister: Socratic Seminar and Kids of All Ages!

Socratic Seminar is not just for older students. If you try it with first-third graders, the procedure is a little different than with fifth or sixth graders, but the outcome is the same...critical thinking!

Here are some things I've noticed with doing Socratic Seminar with younger students:

They get their feelings hurt when someone disagrees with them. Focus on this skill of disagreeing appropriately a little more closely when preparing primary students for Socratic discussions. Try to anticipate all the possibilities and feelings they might have. Honestly, this is true of all grade levels, but the older students understand faster because of their developmental ages.
They need reminders of the norms often. I always go over the norms for every single Socratic Seminar in every single grade, but they may need more support in the primary grades.
They may need more support with reading the book. I would always recommend reading a book twice before discussing.

Students create their own questions as they get older and more adept at Socratic Seminar

In general, there are some tips for making your Socratic Seminars better- no matter how old your students are:

Always review the norms while anticipating all the possibilities of problems you can think of or issues from previous days.
Stay physically away from the group. This is one of the MOST tragic pitfalls of teachers using Socratic Seminars. You must stay out of the discussion as much as possible. If a teacher has a hard time being "hands off", s/he should practice, ummmm, keeping his/her opinions and comments in check! Sorry, but it's the truth. Sit away and try to stay quiet. Observe, listen, always, but guide only if you must. There are, of course, obvious times when the adult in the room must intervene. However, your time for guiding the group to answers you hope to hear should come after the Socratic Seminar when you can make clarifications and have students respond outside of Socratic Seminar.
Never force a student to participate. Instead, when out of earshot of the class, encourage, quietly, gently.
Choose your questions carefully. If your group is in the beginning stages of learning how to conduct Socratic Seminars, you could model and use your own questions. My products have good questions and book ideas to get you started (linked here and below.) Use Bloom's or any worthy taxonomy you choose. If your students are at the stage where they can write their own questions and discussion topics, take time to read them and choose the best ones. I use sticky notes for them to write questions as they are reading, and they then turn them in to me, and I choose the most powerful ones. I often combine similar questions.
Be proactive in teaching students stems for disagreement. Prepare them for the mindset of no right or wrong answers, and everybody's opinion matters.
Use a rubric for self evaluation and goal setting. We set individual and class goals. The norms offer a great starting place for setting all goals. After they have mastered those, let them explore different goals for themselves.
Offer a written response opportunity after Socratic Seminar. Have students use their own questions, questions that were used in the discussion, or any new questions they have for a written response in a journal or even a "Flip" or other online platform for reflections. This is a great opportunity to allow some students who are afraid to share or who didn't get to say what they wanted to say to have a voice.
Encourage, encourage, encourage. Tell them what an awesome job they did. To quote my wise mother who taught for thirty years, "Nothing succeeds like success." Let them know the successes you noticed, even if there is room for improvement.

Below are products to get you started and products for those of you looking for great stories to use with your younger students.