Promises to Keep – Socratic Seminar Questions

Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America by Sharon Robinson tells the story of how her father, baseball legend Jackie Robinson, became the first Black player to enter the major leagues. The story recounts the obstacles and barriers Mr. Robinson faced as he courageously stood against racism and bigotry to bring about a monumental change in American culture.   

This PDF file of Socratic Seminar & Discussion Questions contains thirty-seven carefully crafted queries on thirteen pages. The first twelve pages pose short-answer questions taken from the text, while the thirteenth page contains a summary question which requires the students to give a more detailed response. All of the questions can be used to facilitate in-class discussions and understanding about the novel. 

The Socratic Seminar & Discussion 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 & Discussion Questions will be helpful to teachers who present Sharon Robinson’s Promises to Keep to their students, and I believe that as the students read the story 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 grade five follows immediately after the Answer Key.

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 could write questions for those books. My email address is: gary.ciesla@gmail.com. Thank you.

You can find similar resources in my store!