In this excerpt from the first chapter is a simple, easy technique, Instant Replay. You can learn it in a minute. Instant Replay will serve as more than a review of your day's lesson in teaching. As an educator you will find your leverage remarkably improved, along with your classroom outcomes.

Gaining 4.4 Years' Academic Achievement in One Year:

Why does the student body of St. Andrews Country Day School in Buffalo, NY (www.standrewscds.org/main_pages/renaissance_project.html), learn 4.4 times more rapidly and well on average with our modern Socratic method, compared to conventional schooling methods? On average these students in Buffalo gained 4.4 years in academic achievement level in one school year, 2008-2009. One really fun class gained eight years in just the one year. Graduates are winning scholarships in unprecedented numbers. Practice this simple technique excerpted from our program at St.Andrews and your classes will do at least half as well. As you will see, this very nice educational outcome should not be at all surprising, even if it seems astonishing to most teachers and school officials today. Because:

1. Nearly all learning is by association with previous experiences and concepts. Learning of key concepts and understandings is especially dependent upon long chains of associations with previous meaningful experiences. Meaning and memorability both depend profoundly on how things relate to our previous experiences. (Example for your own benefit: in your own experience, when do you see a student come to understand a key point? When you see that "he is making a connection.")

2. Each of us has not only differing educational levels and backgrounds, but different learning styles, different cognitive styles, different sensory modalities and, of course, different lifetime-accumulated experiences. No teacher can teach well directly, to all or even most of that range of differences.

3. Therefore, it makes sense to arrange for the student to make his own associations with material currently being learned. See below how easily this can be done. It gets even easier once you understand the principle behind it. In this preliminary draft, I will just refer here to the instructions for Dynamic Format which greatly extend the usefulness of the technique.

In addition, there is a lot of research showing that not only learning, but growth and development of the physical brain itself, stem mainly and best from feedback on one's own activities. In other words, those students in Buffalo are not only learning more and faster and with more understanding, their physical brains are also improving and becoming smarter.

In practical terms we have been finding that an optimal classroom mix is about half didactic instruction such as what goes on conventionally now, and half Socratic "buzzing" on key issues and questions. This proportion optimum will vary from teacher to teacher and from topic to topic, but at least a third of classroom time should be Socratically invested if students are to realize anything like that 4.4 times greater learning gain.

In your hands you have the easy means to recreate a substantial part of the St. Andrews Miracle right in your classroom(s).

Even 5 minutes invested at the end of each lesson, invested Socratically can at least double the value and long-term memorability of that lesson. Here is that simple, easy, "Instant Replay" technique we promised you:

1. Organize your next lesson to be ten minutes shorter than usual, so that you can use this procedure at its end. With practice you will need only five minutes at the end and can restore that much length to the duration of your lessons. Square away the next day’s assignments.

2. Have on hand something that can sound as an agreeable chime, one pitched high enough to be heard easily without being loud when everyone is talking at the same time.

3. Say to your students, “Please turn to the person next to you and tell him or her, within two or three minutes, your answer to the question I'm about to ask. Hitch closer to each other to be heard easily once everyone is talking, so you can answer softly. Please tell the person next to you your answer to this question:”

4. Ask whichever of these next five questions seems to you most strategic for this occasion, considering what you have taught and how you think it was received. Over a succession of lessons, rotate to different questions to keep things fresh, and eventually or at need, create your own questions. For this first occasion, ask one of these five questions:

   "What are some of the many ramifications of the main point in this lesson?"

   "What main point in this lesson do you think that you most need to give further attention to, and why?"

   "What are some of the many ways you think that the various points in this lesson relate to one another?"

   "What, for you, was the most important point of this lesson, and what made that the most important point for you?"

   “What in your experience does the main point of this lesson somehow remind you of? And can you tell why that point somehow reminds you of that experience?"

   This last question might be the best one to start out with, not only because it helps the student make connections with his own experience. It’s safe for him to answer because no one can contradict his answer to it to call him wrong. That same thought is behind the wording of the introducing of the question above, “tell the person next to you your answer to this question....” Many students need a good running start in such methods and some strengthening and encouragement before it’s appropriate to challenge and correct them.

5. Somewhere along the way write up on the board the same question you've asked the students, so you can refer back to it in Step 7 below.

6. Move lightly and casually around among your students, not only to make sure each is participating and on topic, but to overhear something of how they have received what you have attempted to teach them today. Not for assigning grades, not for correcting behaviors other than with a positive nod and supporting smile, just to get a surprisingly better feel for how they are processing your teaching, a far better feel for that than you can ever get from tests.

7. Five minutes before the school bell sounds to change classes lightly sound your chime and look expectant. Surprise will momentarily hush your students. Use that momentary pause to say: “Finish that thought, finish that statement, but then let your partner answer to you his or her answer to the same question that you have been answering. Please continue to finish that sentence, but then switch roles so your partner can answer to you, please continue now.“

8. A minute before the school bell rings, sound your chime lightly and in the resultant pause, advise that "when the school bell rings we'll want the seats back in place for the next class, but meanwhile, can we hear one or two of your answers?"

Why these steps, and what are they leading to?

These are easy small steps leading toward a situation where, if you let it go full course, you will have everyone in your classroom being a Socrates to himself and to each other, drawing out each other and himself in detail, in depth and at length, perceptively, reflectively and thoughtfully, on every topic in your curriculum.

Socratic Method is the original accelerated learning or "super-learning" method. That serves as a powerful learning method and a problem-solving method and a method for inventing and innovating and discovering, basically a method for figuring out things. It is better tested and demonstrated than any other learning method throughout 2400 years of history. Your profession is named after its central concept, of "drawing forth" knowledge and understanding, "educare."

Each time the Socratic Method has been widely used, it has always resulted in the highest levels of intellectual performance. The questioning approach of the Athenian Socrates became the Hellenic foundation of western intellectual tradition. In late classical Greece when it was used with a few tens of thousands of people, we saw not only a greater proportion but a greater absolute number of world-class geniuses than all of Earth’s present-day seven-plus billion people are producing today, even with all our information technology advantages. In Renaissance Europe the Socratic Method was revived and used with a few hundred thousand people, and we again saw not only a greater proportion but a greater absolute number of world-class geniuses than today.

Today, thanks to several centuries of science, we know why. As we explore through this handbook (or through the introductory course taught by the Modern Institute of Socratic Learning), we will touch on some of the reasons use of Socratic Method has these effects, and on some of the things we've done to ensure that use of Socratic Method has more of these benefits and, especially, that it is easier to implement than the original version was. Note that one of the main reasons traditional Socratic Method dropped out of general use was that its practice demanded higher levels of knowledge and skill from teachers than were available. By contrast, you have already seen here how easily you can set a modern Socratic process in motion.

Make room at end of your lesson for this little “Instant Replay” session. Tell your students to “turn to the person next to you” to buzz answers to the question you ask them, then ask them one of those five questions, which leads them to review their perceptions and experiences and search out and express meaningful relationships with what you have just taught them.

You can settle for this one simple quick-hitter “Socratization.” Even if you stop with this one technique and add it to your repertoire, it will more than double the value and lasting memory in your students of what you have been teaching them. Or you can go on, for that was a drop in the bucket, a way to get started in an ocean of yet vaster improvements you can make in the educational outcomes of your classroom.