Milkweed Socratic Seminar Questions

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli is a deeply moving novel that tells the story of a young orphan boy who lives insides of a Warsaw, Poland ghetto during the Second World War. The novel recounts many heartwarming, horrific, and tragic episodes in his life, and in the lives of those around him.  

This PDF file of Socratic Seminar Questions contains thirty-five carefully crafted queries on twelve pages. The first eleven pages contain either three or four questions, while the twelfth page contains a concluding question which requires a more detailed response from the students. All of the questions can be used to facilitate in-class discussions about the novel. 

The Socratic Seminar Questions can also be used for other purposes, such as homework assignments or classroom quizzes, and the pages will help teachers gauge whether or not the students have read and understand the specific sections of the novel. 

It is my hope that these Socratic Seminar Questions will be helpful to teachers who present Jerry Spinelli’s Milkweed to their students, and I believe that as the students read the novel they will find that the questions help them develop critical thinking skills in English and Language Arts.

Common Core Standards for Reading and Writing for grades seven and eight are included at the end of the Socratic Seminar Questions.

If you find that these questions are helpful to your students, please contact me with the names of other novels that you use in class and I will see if I can write questions for those books. My email address is: gary.ciesla@gmail.com. Thank you.

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The PDF includes:

Questions that can be used to stimulate class discussions, as homework assignments, or even as quizzes to check student understanding.

There is also a teacher's answer key, and a listing of Common Core Standards for grades 7 and 8.