Friday, November 16, 2007

The Apology by Plato

Students will finish reading Plato's Apology in class on Monday. They will also complete their flow map on the sequence of Socrate's defense. The purpose of creating a flow map is to practice good reading strategies on this more difficult philosophical text.

Good readers ask themselves questions while reading: What happened? What can I infer from what the author wrote? What do I predict will happen next? Good readers may not even realize that their brain is doing this naturally.

The flow map strategy allows you to stop and ask yourself--Who, What, Where, When, How and Why--and then jot down a few main ideas and supporting details.

Your goal is to increase your reading comprehension as you proceed through a text so that you don't need to stop and take notes as often. When I first begin a novel, I take a lot of notes--character tree map, plot flow and multi-flow conflict analysis. However, as I start comprehending more because I have "gotten into the novel," I only stop and reflect in my notes at the end of each chapter.

If you will not be in class on Monday, you should finish reading The Apology and creating your flow map so that you are ready for class discussion on Tuesday. We will discuss a variety of topics Tuesday, but one of the questions will be: What did you learn about philosophy, Socrates, Plato, happiness, truth and wisdom in The Apology? If you are a reluctant speaker in class, you may want to jot down a few ideas for this question on your tree map. Use the color that indicates World Masterpieces citation.

To read The Apology online, click here.

1 comment:

David C said...

I think that this copy of the Apology is longer than the one in World Masterpieces. There is a long dialogue between Socrates and Meletus which was missing from World Masterpieces somewhere near page 420, which was where I left off during class.