Philosophy for Children through interactive story telling
Lesson Blogs
Read our lesson blogs to see the enquiries in action!
During the Autumn term of 2019, we taught Delphi the Philosopher with our own Year 3 and Year 5 classes. Read our detailed lesson blogs to see how the lessons look in practice. See children's work and read about the incredible progress our children made, in one of the most detailed accounts of teaching philosophy to children available anywhere.
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Due to Data Protection time limitations, we've now removed the pictures and videos of children from these blogs.
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(Specific consent has been obtained to publish the photos and videos on this website. Do not copy or replicate these in any way. Many thanks to parents/carers for their support, and to Mrs Hegedus and Miss Kasia for taking the photos.)​
Lesson Blog: Prologue
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everybody,
It’s the beginning of the Autumn term and the time has come when we can once again start teaching Delphi the Philosopher to our new classes! I teach a Year 3 class in a city primary school in the West Midlands of England. It’s been a whole year since we first trialed these lessons, and this time we’ve decided to blog about our experiences. Hopefully we’ll be able to show you exactly why we find Delphi so valuable – and so much fun!
Rosie will tell you her experiences a little later, but first let me tell you about my first lesson, where we read the Prologue together.
There are two main purposes to the first lesson – we want to introduce children to the story and the characters, but we also want to capture their initial ideas and identify their initial skills. The session includes various short activities and discussions to practise the basic skills we’re going to need to become philosophers – listening carefully, asking questions and giving our opinion.
But first – the story. Delphi is (as far as I know) a completely unique style of teaching. The story will, at various times, be my modelling, my questioning, my learning focus. By packaging up all the skill development and discussion questions into a story, it not only means progress will develop naturally, but it engages children more than it otherwise would. Children care about a story. My class cared about this story almost instantly; as soon as we had seen the front cover and met this stroppy, but rather familiar, girl called Delphi. You can see the set-up of the classroom in these photos – a storyteller, a story, a slideshow of wonderful pictures (courtesy of the wonderful Rosie). We will keep breaking off from this set-up in all sorts of ways, but we will always keep coming back to the story. You can find out more about how it all works here.
Philosophy lessons should be surprising. As we go through the scheme, you’ll see that no two sessions are ever quite the same. When you start a session, there is a wonderful buzz of expectancy in the room as the children have literally no idea what is coming next. The first surprise for this class is that Delphi is funny. In fact, I was surprised at how funny they found it – at one point, when Delphi tried to stop her friend Plato from crying, I had to pause because one boy was on his back, struggling to stop manically giggling. Laughter is, I feel, a very underused tool in many classrooms.
The ‘why questions’ activity in this lesson is a case in point. The children learn that Delphi likes to ask a lot of why questions.
They then have the chance to write their own why questions.
At which point, we learn that Delphi asks so many why questions to her Dad that he feels like he is being bombarded with them. So that’s what we do.
It’s fair to say that at this point, the children realise that this is not like any lesson they have ever done before. Don’t worry, I did ask them to do this. And they did stop throwing things at me in the end.
We get back to the story and we meet Plato and Socrates, and we learn that Socrates wanted to be a good person. But what is a good person? We have our first major class discussion, which I do not push in any direction or question responses further. Not yet. I wanted to see what they could do already.
Most children could give their opinion. Some children used because to explain themselves. I heard a few ‘if’s and a couple of children used examples to explain their idea. Nobody picked up on anybody else’s idea and took it further. Right – I know where we are and what we need to learn. Listening to their talk and working out your starting point is important when starting a scheme like this. I want to notice the progress they make. More about this another day.
I also wanted to capture their ideas about this question, so we did a little written work. There isn’t a huge amount of written work in Delphi – this is the closest we come to a worksheet – but capturing their initial ideas about this question is important. We’ll be talking about how to be a good person a great deal over the next few weeks. Most children felt being a good person was about being ‘nice’ or ‘kind’ in a general sense – but a few children also thought that there was more to it than that.
By the end of the session, we had achieved everything I had been hoping for. I had done some initial assessments, we’d practised some basic skills, and above all, the children had had a fantastic time. As one boy remarked, less than halfway through the lesson: “This is my favourite lesson ever already!”
When it was time to close the book, leaving Delphi and Plato deciding to break in to Socrates’ trial, there was a roar of discontent. Delphi lessons often seem to end like this.
They, and you, are just going to have to wait until next week to find out what happens next.
I can’t wait. I’d forgotten how much fun it is!
Over to Rosie, to see how this session went in her school, with her class of Year 5’s.
It was a confusing start for the children on Friday. Mostly for two reasons: one being that their teacher had decided to come to school wearing a golden ticket costume, and the other being the mysterious appearance of a new subject on the visual timetable – ‘philosophy’. There were many raised eyebrows and impending questions from 9 o’clock that morning. The first reason was easily explained – “No your teacher has not lost the plot, it is in fact Roald Dahl day, hooray!” As for the second reason, I had to leave them in suspense until approximately 2 o’clock that afternoon.
I have been beyond excited to begin Delphi the Philosopher with this new class and the very first lesson did not disappoint one bit! First of all, I asked them what they thought philosophy was and was immediately met with some very blank faces. Of course, this was great because that means we have a fantastic journey ahead of us. Lots of them thought philosophy was just a posh word for history and one said they thought it was a subject only meant for intelligent people. I haven’t told them yet what philosophy really is as I know Delphi will do that job for me in the coming weeks, but I can tell already that this class are going to be really gripped by it!
Sharing the front cover with them was an absolute treat. Their mouths just dropped. It was like having an aquarium tank full of fish staring back at me. “You drew that?” “Are you famous?” “Can I buy this?” “Did you draw all of that picture?” I talked a bit about how Delphi came to be and how this was a project a very good friend had asked me to get involved in. I wanted them to see that it was just a bit of fun, doing what we love to do. It was so lovely to hear their admiration for my illustrations as well. I hadn’t told them before this moment that I had illustrated a book, so it was a very special moment to see their reactions. I really hope this personal journey that I am sharing with these children inspires them to go on to do similar things if they want to.
Once we got past our initial astonishment and picked our jaws off the floor, we made a start. We met Delphi. We met Plato. We met Socrates. They were hooked from the very start. Especially since our topic for this term is all about the Ancient Greeks and our table groups are incidentally named after famous Greek philosophers. When I was reading the prologue, you could hear a pin drop. They were so captivated, and I could tell they were bursting with questions already!
The children responded really well to the activities too. I think they particularly enjoyed pelting me with their ‘why’ questions halfway through the lesson. Most of them wrote down, ‘why do we have to go to school?’, as their very first ‘why’ question. This was quite amusing since only a few moments previously they were angry that Delphi wasn’t allowed to go to school because she was a girl! Our initial discussion on what makes a good person was engaging and the children thought really hard although they struggled to sustain some of their answers. But, again, that just proved to me that Delphi the Philosopher would be a perfect opportunity to take their thinking skills much further.
My favourite moment this week had to be at the very end of the lesson. I had just read the last line of the prologue – “we’re breaking in.” I closed the book and my class went absolutely wild. “No!” “You can’t end it there.” “It’s too long to wait until next Friday.” “Why did you stop there?” I think that it will be the moment I’ll remember each time I revisit Delphi – the sheer frustration that the children had to wait a whole week to find out what would happen next. That is definitely a very good sign that this will work!
Bring on week 2.
We started this website so you could share the fun and learning too. You can start your own journey with the Prologue by clicking the link below, or the full Delphi the Philosopher scheme here.
We hope you have as much fun as we’re having. See you next week!
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Lesson Blog: The Trial of Socrates
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everybody,
My Year 3 children were very excited for our next Delphi lesson! Now that we had introduced the characters and immersed ourselves in Delphi’s world, this week we would be getting into some essential philosophy skills – and setting up some big questions that will be at the heart of many of our enquiries. There was a considerable amount of anticipation in the room as we settled down to read, and more than a couple of children asking if they could start throwing post-its at me again.
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This, of course, is the advantage of a longer story, rather than something completely different each time. It pulls us all along with it. The children are invested before you start.​
On with the story. Delphi and Plato try and sneak into the trial but soon find themselves trapped in a room, with someone coming! Perfect! A chance for a bit of creative thinking as a warm-up.
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Suggestions ranged from hiding under the table to… well… watch the video and see.
Luckily, it turned out only to be Phaedo, a friend of Socrates (as the well-read amongst you will know), which gives Delphi the perfect opportunity to ask some questions to find out more about what’s going on. This is an important skill of course. I wanted to make sure we could ask questions that made sense, and that weren’t something we already knew about. Some of their questions showed how deeply in the story they felt! They wanted to know more about Socrates, what he had done and what his punishment might be.
We were building up to our main discussions now, and the first big discussion question was: “Is it OK to ask questions and disagree with people?” The children were confident in giving their opinions – but this is where Delphi philosophy really comes into it’s own. As a teacher, I want to know that we are making progress in these discussions – that the skills we are using are developing. To make sure this happens, we have a secret weapon: sentence stems!​
This then becomes an expectation for our responses from now on. I model it, and then we practise it. It doesn’t take long before the children use it without prompting, some at a basic level, some at a more advanced level. It’s such a simple tool, but when used right it can work wonders.
There are many techniques to teaching philosophy. I’ll keep dropping them into this blog as we go along, but the full Delphi the Philosopher scheme includes a Teacher’s Guide which includes a full description of all the strategies you can use.
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But anyway, back to the lesson. We’re making progress. Delphi and Plato manage to sneak into the trial and together we take a glimpse through the door…
We see Miletus accusing Socrates at the trial, so we re-enacted it, complete with a fluffy beard and very enthusiastic guards who kept telling him to “stop asking annoying questions!” The rest of the class became the Athenian jury and we discussed whether we thought Socrates deserved to be punished.
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Along the way, we introduced another sentence stem – how to say 'I’m not sure yet because…' This is an essential step in developing children’s reasoning as it shows children how to express an idea that might involve agreeing a bit with both, or thinking something different. As soon as the children realised this was an option, it became a popular response. “I’m not sure yet because why would you keep asking questions if you already knew the answer?” said one child. We were exactly where I wanted them to be. So, we returned to the story.
From here, we see Socrates being found guilty. Delphi and Plato race round to try and see him before he is taken away. Then there comes a very significant moment in the story (and actually, the very first inspiration for inventing Delphi in the first place. If you know your history, you might notice what we’ve done here…)
Our final discussion, practising our ‘I'm not sure yet because’ responses, works very well. We don’t know what Socrates means yet, but that’s OK. We’ll figure it out.
​What was so pleasing about this lesson for me was that I could see progress in the children’s reasoning and explaining skills already – and each chapter will push it on a little bit further as we get further into the story. Philosophy through storytelling. That’s what we were aiming for with Delphi.
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Let’s see how Rosie’s Year 5 class in another school got on this week…
There’s been an exciting anticipation amongst my class this week for our next philosophy instalment. We’ve had a week immersing ourselves in the world of mythical beasts in English and the chronology of the Greek period in our Topic lessons so the children are certainly now in the full Ancient Greek mode, which is fantastic! There’s been a handful of children, who literally have been asking me everyday ‘Is it Delphi day yet?’ I suppose for a child that Friday afternoon does still feel like it’s miles away when you’re waiting for something you really enjoy.
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There was an exciting buzz in the room when we settled down to begin lesson number 2. The children could confidently recall all that happened in the story so far and were quite clearly desperate to get going to find out what happened next. Our story telling this week involved lots of laughs, gasps and a few suggestions like ‘You could stand on top of that barrel and jump on the head of the nasty man coming through the door.’ We also rearranged our seating in the classroom to reflect the layout of Socrates’ trial and the children were very excited to be given the opportunity to step into the role of some of our characters in the story. Interactive storytelling at its best.
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This week’s lesson was aimed at developing our discussion skills by giving reasons in response to some big questions. The first two sentence stems were introduced and the children immediately leapt onto using them. It’s amazing what progress five little words on a coloured speech bubble can achieve in just a few minutes.
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A stand out moment for me this week was when we were discussing whether it was fair that Socrates was in jail for just asking questions. Lots of children, amusingly, thought it was fair because he was, in their words, ‘quite annoying’. Some thought that it was a bit harsh but they seemed to be the minority. One boy though seemed to be sitting with a very confused expression on his face. He said: “I agree Socrates should be in jail because the questions were annoying.” I then asked him if he thought that asking too many questions was a crime. He replied, “Well, some questions are important so no but maybe Socrates was asking silly questions. If it was my sister then she wouldn’t go to jail as it’s ok for her to ask questions. Actually, maybe Socrates shouldn’t be in jail either…. but I don’t know…” I won’t lie, I felt a bit of triumph when I saw the muddle he was getting himself into, and I used this as a perfect time to introduce the ‘I’m not sure yet because…’ sentence stem. We then talked about what that sentence stem meant and why not being sure was valued just as much as knowing what you think. To have a chance like this handed to me on a plate this year was just amazing!
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All in all, another very successful lesson with the help of Delphi! I already feel like my class have made progress in developing their thinking skills. The ‘I agree/disagree with that because…’ sentence stem has really helped their ability to listen and respond to one another, rather than our class dialogue being just between them and me.
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Week 3 is on the horizon!
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Don’t just let us have all the fun! You can download both the Prologue and this chapter in one set by clicking the link below, or the entire story and set of resources for Delphi the Philosopher here.
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Lesson Blog: Big Questions
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everybody,
Welcome to the next chapter of Delphi the Philosopher! This week our story takes us to the Acropolis and to four very strange men who practise this strange thing called ‘philosophy’. This lesson is mainly focused on developing the children’s questioning skills, and as you’ll see, the children’s ability to reason and question really develop over this lesson. There’s also quite a few giggles too!
We begin the lesson by joining Delphi as she thinks about Socrates’ words from the last chapter – that the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t know anything. We discussed this briefly, mainly as a warm-up – and of course, I wanted to see that the children were using the sentence stems we introduced in the last lesson.
Listening to partner talk is crucial when the children have these discussions. When I listened, I could hear plenty of ‘I’m not sure yet because’ which was what I wanted to hear. We also started a working wall of some of the ideas and characters we met so far which we can keep adding to as we go along.
Then we followed Delphi up the Acropolis to meet this strange group of men who call themselves philosophers, and I did my best with a range of rather silly voices. They tell her what philosophy means – something which is, of course, rather hard to define. For now, we define it as “asking the most important questions in life and trying to answer them by thinking,” but this will develop even within this lesson. But what is most important is the questions! As Delphi settles down to talk to them, she is given rather a strange task - asking questions, to a cup.
The children responded to this task with a mix of delight and bafflement but soon got in the spirit of it. Why do this task? Because it’s a brilliant way of developing children’s imaginations to ask questions that they have never thought of before and can’t answer. I can’t remember where I came across this activity (so apologies for not crediting it – let me know if it was you), but it’s always been a favourite so I wanted to include it in the story.
From here, it was only a short step to thinking about philosophical questions. Well, once we’d worked out how to say ‘philosophical’.
With Delphi giving them a few examples through the story, the children were soon able to generate a whole range of philosophical questions (and many other types of questions besides!) Children are so naturally good at this. You only need to give them a push in the right direction. Take a look at a few!
We spent a bit of time exploring each other’s questions, before we started to discuss what makes a ‘good’ question. This video shows exactly the purpose of all this – in the space of a few minutes we’d gone from asking a cup what it’s like to get drunk, to discovering metaphysics.
This lesson isn’t just about questioning skills though. Delphi then finds herself in the middle of a debate about what makes a good life. Although Delphi and the children don’t know it, they’re actually engaging with the debate between the different schools of post-Socratic Hellenistic thought here. We have the ‘Fat One’ saying gaining pleasure is most important (our Epicurean), the ‘Strict One’ saying it is most important to control your emotions (our Stoic) and the ‘Dopey One’ saying we can’t know what the best life is (our Sceptic). Of course, there is the ‘Smelly One’ too… But who is right?
This next discussion is a wonderful example of the progress the children have made. The children are already responding critically – some have reasons why they agree, others are not sure because they want to agree a bit with more than one, and one girl even wants to get at the philosophical question behind their ideas. Speaking as their class teacher, I know this kind of discussion simply would not have been possible a few weeks ago.
We finished the lesson by thinking about the ‘Smelly One’, Diogenes the Cynic. Delphi asks him if he needs anything – but he responds in the same way as he once did to Alexander the Great. I’ll leave you to read the story to find out what that was!
It was a great session – full of surprises and big, silly thinking. I could see some real progress from the children’s discussions and, again, it was so much fun!
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Let’s see how Rosie got on this week, with her class of Year 5’s!
I went home on Friday with a really happy feeling after another successful day in which the children listened, laughed and learnt alongside Delphi. I think out all of the lessons so far this was probably my favourite. It was one of those lessons where you could really see the journey from the beginning to the end and it was really obvious that the children had made progress in just one hour. This particular lesson is called ‘Big Questions’ and we certainly uncovered over a hundred big questions within it.
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We began by having some reflection time on the quote from Socrates last week – “the only thing I know is that I don’t know anything at all.” Lots of children were still unsure and immediately resumed their use of the ‘I’m not sure yet because…’ sentence stem. But equally, they were all keen to give it a go and try to explain their thoughts on the matter. One child admitted that he had gone home last week and asked his parents about what they thought Socrates had meant! The quote has been sitting on a wall at the very front of my classroom so I could quite imagine that it has been buzzing around some of their heads all week.
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In the story, Delphi meets four philosophers with four very different personalities. The children were instantly transfixed by them all, particularly Diogenes in his barrel. By half way, the class seemed to be in agreement that they found the ‘fat one’ hilarious, the ‘smelly one’ disgusting, the ‘dopey one’ cool and they didn’t seem to like the ‘strict one’ at all. In fact, a child sat right in front of me went from pulling a nasty face whenever the ‘smelly one’ was mentioned to laughing manically every time the ‘fat one’ spoke. Entertaining for me as well as them, I guess!
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What is good about this lesson is that the children finally get to see and understand what philosophy is all about – asking big and important questions and trying to think of possible answers. The activity involving asking questions to a cup was absolutely brilliant for leading the children into the philosophical world. Yes, I had some very strange looks when I asked them all to begin talking to a travel mug I had borrowed from the staff room but it didn’t take them long to be bitten by the big question bug. Questions immediately came flying in: “What’s it like to be a cup?” “Which type of drink makes you happiest?” “Does it feel different when you have a cold drink inside you than when you have a hot drink?” Some children even began to ask the cup questions about whether it could solve the big problem surrounding Socrates and setting him free. They clearly felt like this was the cup of wisdom! I loved teaching this part of lesson both last year and this year as the children get to go through the experience Delphi has in the story at exactly the same time. It is particularly satisfying to see a child’s face light up when the question they had thought of is then reiterated in Delphi’s thoughts too!
We moved on to thinking about big questions in general. Questions we couldn’t necessarily find the answers to. At first the children were a little hesitant - I could tell they had lots of big, silly questions that had appeared in their mind but were a little unsure whether they should write it down or not. But, as soon as one child dared to write “What if toilets could talk?” they all seemed to just burst with questions! Through this activity and with the help of the dialogue in the story between Delphi and the philosophers, we could work out whether the questions we had brainstormed were big enough to be considered as philosophical questions. We learnt the difference between what would be classed as a ‘scientific question’ that can be answered and a ‘philosophical question.’ We used ‘why…’, ‘how…’ and ‘what if…’ to build up even more ideas! I think the children surprised themselves with how many questions they could actually come up with.
Towards the end of the lesson, we discover the philosophers in the middle of a debate about what a good life should be. The children listened and then responded to each of the philosophers’ ideas and tried to judge for themselves who they agreed most with. There was a clear split in three directions (I think my class had clearly made a pact to never agree with the ‘strict one’ in any circumstances) and this meant that our discussion skills could come into full use. I could hear so many children using the ‘I agree/disagree with that because…’ sentence stem more independently and this week, in particular, I saw great improvement in the class’ listening skills when another child was giving their opinion. The highlight this week has to be when one child announced very confidently at the final discussion point, “I agree with Diogenes because I’d rather be smelly and happy than be clean and unhappy.”
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But Delphi didn’t stop at the end of the lesson for us this week. We had some free time at the end of the day and I decided to fill it with some class discussions based on some of the questions the children had generated earlier that day. Our main question we were trying to answer was: “If the ground was made out of jelly, what would life be like?” The reaction was brilliant! We had contributions that explained it would be the best because you’d be able to eat all the time and then instant reactions that challenged the idea and explained that if we were to eat the ground there would be no Earth left for us to live on. This led to the question ‘would it be possible for humans to survive on a world made of jelly?’ and then ‘Would it be fair to wildlife if the world was made of jelly?’ The children actually began to take it all quite seriously at one point, they were really into it! It was an absolute joy to be a part of and just shows how easy you can slip philosophy into the primary classroom. Our second question was a little stranger: ‘what if people’s hands were their feet and their feet were their hands?’ I won’t go into to much detail of some of the gross ideas my Year 5s came up with in response to this…
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Anyway, it was another fantastic week of Delphi and I can’t wait for week 4!
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Want to bring out the Big Questions in your class? Click the link below or click here for the entire scheme of work for Delphi the Philosopher.
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See you next week!
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Lesson Blog: The Ring
Discover the story by clicking here!
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This week we took on moral decision making, with a philosophical classic. The Ring of Gyges, a mythical ring which makes the wearer invisible, was raised by Socrates in Book 2 of Plato’s Republic as a challenge: should you do the right thing even if there are no consequences for being bad? This session also focuses on the skills of using ‘if’ and ‘then’ to build children’s skills in considering examples and consequences. Both aspects of the lesson proved to be quite powerful in our classes, as you’ll see!
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We start with a mysterious note, seemingly from Socrates. All it says is: “A person only does the wrong thing if they don’t know what is right.” This little line of Socratic philosophy would become a touchstone for the rest of the lesson. The children responded brilliantly straight away, with no input from me. It’s great to have these little warm up discussions, just to see how far we’ve come already.
​Along with the note was a mysterious ring, which of course Delphi had to try on… but what would the children do if they were invisible?
Cue a lot of giggles and children desperately trying to cover up what they’d written in their notebooks! I can at least say the depravity of their responses wasn’t quite as bad as Rosie’s Year 5 class (but I’ll leave Rosie to tell you about that later!).
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It’s very important not to moralise during these sorts of discussions. We’re looking for the children to realise the consequences of their actions, not just tell them or dismiss their ideas straight away. By far the most popular response in my class was to steal their mum’s phone. Just in case you were wondering.
From there, Delphi gets a little bit… carried away. The children were delightfully shocked as she causes chaos in the Agora, stealing cake, tripping people over and getting other people into trouble. I could sense some of the children already getting a little bit uncomfortable about what she was doing and were ready for the next big question.
It was at this point, we introduce the ‘If… then…’ sentence stem. I love to explain the word ‘if’ as ‘let’s imagine!’ To use the word properly, the children have to understand that to use the word ‘if’ is to constrain what might happen – in other words, to have a premise from which to build a conclusion.
To start with, and this is very common, some children wanted to talk about the possibility of Delphi being caught. This shows they haven’t yet understood the ‘if’ as a constraint – if Delphi definitely isn’t going to get caught, then there is no way she can get caught.
After a little more explanation, the children then started to use the sentence stem to express their ideas.
This led to a fantastic discussion. Now children were using the sentence stems to challenge this idea – and to change their minds.
As Delphi also realises the consequences of her actions, many of the children started to think deeper about the ‘then’ part of their reasoning. The silence in the room when reading this section of the story was quite amazing – there was a real sense of realisation that these actions have significant consequences. In the next discussion, some children had changed their minds completely.
These videos are a great example of how the sentence stems, the discussion and the story all combine to move children’s reasoning skills forward. We revisited our first ideas about what we’d do with the ring and realised that our actions would have some consequences.
The discussion moves on as Delphi decides to use the ring to try and do the right thing. Cue lots more excitement!
By this point the children were using ‘if’ and ‘then’ quite freely. There was lots of talk of rescuing people from danger, but also quite a lot of disagreement. One boy said he would be able to ‘sort out’ all the bad guys, but immediately another child challenged him by saying: ‘then you would be a bad guy too!” I challenged them to create some ‘if’ and ‘then’ sentences out of their idea, with their partner trying to challenge them by showing them the consequence.
By this point in the story, Delphi was getting desperate. Her attempts at helping people had caused a lot of unforeseen consequences. The children were sensing the difficulty she was having. Now the class were finding it extremely difficult to say for sure what she should do, as the consequences were becoming more complex. Delphi tries to take some money and give it to the cake seller she stole from yesterday, but all this does is leave him very likely to get arrested.
The children were seeing ‘if’ and ‘then’ easily by this point. If she gave the money to the cake seller, he would just be arrested. If she didn’t give it back, then someone else would be blamed for it. The children were starting to give up on the ring just as Delphi herself realised she had no idea what to do with it.
This, of course, was the idea all along. By taking children on this journey through the story, we’ve moved their thinking from their initial response, to considering consequences, and then to the realisation that this is a much bigger and more complicated question than we first thought. The suggestion of throwing the ring into the river was actually made by a child when I first taught a version of this session about six years ago. Many children in my class agreed – in fact, the general consensus was that this wasn’t enough and it should be locked up somewhere so no one else could get hold of it. Others thought Delphi should find someone who did know the right thing to do. One boy spoke for all when he simply said, “I’m not sure yet because of all the consequences.”
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Welcome to moral decision-making children!
Rosie, with her Year 5 class, seemed to have a great time with this session too!
I don’t really know where to begin with writing about this lesson. It was just out of this world. The adventure we took together with Delphi and the discoveries we made along the way were incredible. We had so much fun and the children were thoroughly engaged with Delphi’s story from beginning to end. (The protests at the end of the lesson when they realise it’s over for another week are seriously getting rather noisy, I wouldn’t be surprised if they start making placards soon.)
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Anyway, it all began with a mysterious note. “A person only does the wrong thing if they don’t know what is right.” Immediately, the children jumped at the chance to discuss the meaning of this. We had time to respond with our partners and then we set out in trying to explain to the class. Yet again, the sentence stems we had already introduced were in full swing and I felt like I had handed control mostly over to the children to manage the discussion between themselves – something they would have struggled to do only a couple of weeks back. It was all rather tame and amicable. The class were being very respectful towards each other’s responses and on their very best behaviour.
But then came the ring. This ring changed everything! All I had to do was to pause on the big discussion question: “If you had a ring that turned you invisible, what would you do?” and suddenly my class erupted like a wildfire. The ideas they had! The tricks they would play! The crimes they would commit! One child said he would sneak into first class on a plane. Another said she would stand directly behind people and literally breathe down their neck. One said they’d steal all the pudding, while a few made links directly with Delphi and suggested she freed Socrates with it. Some suggestions were so disgusting that I don’t think I’ll look at some of those children in the same way ever again. This ring let them into a world with no boundaries, where they could do what they wanted and not have any consequences for it. Of course, that’s what Delphi had thought too.
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This lesson was focused on giving examples in response to a question and then moving onto the consequences of actions using the ‘If…then…’ sentence stem. The great thing about using a story as the basis for a lesson is that the children learn as the character learns. In this case, Delphi suddenly came to realise that all of her ‘free’ actions she had done hadn’t resulted in the best for other people. As I was reading this part of the story, the atmosphere in the room all of a sudden changed from being over-zealous and carefree to regretful and solemn. The realisation that Delphi had experienced was also being felt by thirty other children sat in the room. This was a perfect way in for identifying the consequences of ideas and using this to structure our thoughts. The children returned to their initial thoughts and added responses like ‘if I snuck into first class then someone would lose their seat they paid for and won’t be able to go on holiday’ or ‘if I stole all the pudding then that wouldn’t be fair on other people.’ Straightaway, as a teacher, I could see that the children had moved forward in their thinking skills and this certainly stuck with them through the remaining parts of the lesson.
Towards the end of this chapter, Delphi is sat by the river, contemplating what she should do with the ring. She eventually decides it’s too much responsibility and throws it in the river. The children were asked to reflect on Delphi’s choice and whether they would have done the same if it was them. This year my class responded in an entirely different way to my last class, which was quite interesting. Most of this class were convinced Delphi had done the wrong thing and that she was wasting the power of the ring by throwing it away, the opposite of my previous class. Lots of them felt like this ring was a sign from Socrates and that he wanted Delphi to use it to help him to escape. Some suggested she should hold onto it in case it comes in useful and one said that she should keep it but wait until she is old enough to use it responsibly. There of course were a few who disagreed with this and thought Delphi had been right. We ended our lesson with a very powerful discussion between the children about their choices and it was so satisfying to see how much they cared about it. I don’t think they even realised how much philosophical thinking they had done in just one hour.
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What I love about teaching philosophy is that the children are being trained to be free thinkers. They can analyse a situation in their own way and there’s no judgment upon their opinion as different perspectives enhance our enquiries as a whole. There was one child who really stood out to me this week because of their free thinking. Right from the start, this child had their suspicions about the ring. In a classroom full of children writing down the craziest of evil plans they had for when they were invisible, one child wrote down ‘I would not keep it because it could be dangerous and it could do other things that are bad so I would sell it.’ I questioned her about her idea and she could justify herself using lots of examples. I asked her what she had meant by ‘other things that are bad’ and she replied “It could be a trick. If she puts it on her finger then she might not be able to get it off and she’d be invisible forever. It might make her transform into other things or send her to a different place.” Throughout the lesson, this child stuck to this opinion, the events in the story supporting her reasoning and the class were amazed at the end of the lesson when it turned out she was proven to have predicted what Delphi realised far later in the chapter. It felt like a very special moment for that child and it really highlighted to me why it is that lessons like this are so important.
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We are providing the platform for children to be able to think for themselves and not be afraid to do so. Here’s to continuing this ambition through to week 5 and beyond!
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If you want to take your class on this journey, or at least find out what horrendous things they would do if they could get away with it, then you can download ‘The Ring’ Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below! Or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next week, thanks for reading!
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(This enquiry started life as an enquiry from The If Machine by Peter Worley, at the Philosophy Foundation, which offers a goldmine of philosophy resources and training. Many thanks to Peter for supporting our work!)
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Lesson Blog: The Golden Mean
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everybody,
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This week’s lesson took a little more preparation than usual. Delphi lessons don’t require a lot of resourcing, but this time I made a trip to the supermarket to prepare these…
Yes, this week Delphi and Plato break into a potions shop and discover virtue ethics. While last week we focused on what makes a good action, today focuses on what makes a good person – moving us from Socrates to Aristotle. We’ll also continue to build up understanding of using the magic word ‘if’.
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We kicked off by asking the children whether they thought Delphi was a good person.
The general consensus was that she was, but sometimes she just gets things wrong if she doesn’t think about things properly. These warm up discussions are a great way of seeing where we are at before beginning the learning for today. I was really pleased to hear lots of ‘because’s and ‘if’s in their answers, but also some awareness that it isn’t a simple question or answer. One girl’s response showed this perfectly – using ‘I agree and disagree’ (which is something we’ll focus on in the next couple of weeks).
This kind of response shows the development of more abstract and analytical thinking – a great sign of progress in her thinking skills.
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But on with today! Delphi and Plato sneak into the shop and discover a set of potions. Having some real potions make this particularly exciting for the children.
As soon as the children understood the premise they swiftly worked out what they needed to do. Which potions will we need to make a good person?
To start with, most of their responses were a list of positive virtues, but there were one or two children who felt we needed some of the ‘bad’ sounding virtues too. When asked, they thought that we might need a little bit of unkindness or dishonesty, as we couldn’t be kind and honest all the time.
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Of course, Delphi manages to persuade Plato to drink one of the potions…. so I did too.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t really Confidence potion. Or wine.
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The children could predict what they thought would happen. Delphi becomes super kind and Plato super confident, and they immediately start acting very strangely. Delphi offers to give away her house to a stranger and Plato picks a fight with a soldier.
We use all of this as a vehicle to start asking ‘what if?’ – our next sentence stem. What if someone was too kind? What if someone was too confident? The children practised asking these questions and were quickly convinced that this wasn’t the way to be a good person at all.
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When Plato drags Delphi back to try and fix the problem, one boy suggests Delphi should drink the selfishness potion to get back to normal. It is always very satisfying when the children predict what’s coming next. Plato insists Delphi drinks the potion, so we tried it too…
The children listened in horror as Plato became a quivering wreck from the Cowardice potion and Delphi first becomes horrible, and then drinks an unlabelled red potion and seems to become surprisingly very friendly with Plato.
Listening to the story also gives children time to think. By this time, children were already coming up with other solutions to how they can get back to normal. It’s always such a delight when you hear a child discover a new idea. One girl basically discovers Aristotle’s Golden Mean (the idea that all virtues should be in balance) for herself.
Once this had been suggested, most children were convinced this was the solution – but I was glad to see, not everybody. There were still some children who thought that mixing all the potions would just make you mad. It’s important that children know they can disagree not just with each other, but with the story too.
Whether you agree or not, the mixed potion seems to work and gets them back to normal just in time to stop Delphi’s love potion make her do something really embarrassing. The moment when Delphi almost kisses Plato was greeted by almost uncontrollable laughter from the children. When Delphi realises what she almost did, she is mortified and furious at Plato (even though he had just saved her). By this point one girl was literally rolling around on the floor, laughing uncontrollably. Who says teaching ethics can’t be funny?
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I was really impressed with my class during this session. They seemed to be ahead of the story every time, and it really led them on to the next step of their thinking very easily. Using ‘if’ seems to be becoming second nature already, and I’m seeing more and more development towards abstract thinking about these big questions. Plus, they got all the jokes. What more could I ask for?
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Perhaps being brave enough to drink the potions themselves, like Rosie’s Year 5 class…
After the madness of last week, the children were incredibly keen for philosophy this Friday. They were especially intrigued by the mysterious bag I had at the front of the room. The lesson began with a sense of curiosity as to what was meant by the ‘golden mean’ – the name of this week’s chapter. Lots of children predicted that this was yet another challenge sent by Socrates whilst others were convinced this was a sequel involving the golden ring from last week. Either way, it was fantastic to see the children talking, listening and debating with one another right from the very start.
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The beginning of the lesson gave children time to reflect once more on the big question from lesson 1 of Delphi the Philosopher – what makes a good person? They used Delphi as a character to evaluate and I could hear that their ideas had progressed since that very first lesson in September. Children were using the sentence stems more independently - some shouting them just so that I was sure to hear them using them: “I’M NOT SURE YET BECAUSE Delphi did some bad things with the ring but she didn’t realise they were bad.” Furthermore, it really felt like the children were comfortable with developing their independent thought processes and not being afraid of sharing their opinions. This really highlighted to me how much Delphi the Philosopher has encouraged and built up a safe classroom environment, where all ideas are welcomed without being judged. It has also increased the children’s attitude towards accepting other people’s disagreements and using these to either challenge their own thought or find different ways to convince others they are right.
This lesson explicitly focuses on exploring this idea of a ‘good person’. After Delphi and Plato stumble upon a shop filled with the most mesmerising of potions that represented virtues of a person, the children were asked to fill up an empty bottle with the virtues needed to make a good person. This was relatively early on the lesson and it provided a perfect platform for the children to springboard their thinking from as the lesson developed. There was a wide variety of ideas in my classroom as responses to this activity. A lot of children listed many ‘positive’ attributes, including kindness, courage, patience and honesty. Some children added in quantities and demonstrated the idea of balance within the potion mixture. A couple of the class were adamant that a potion wasn’t needed to make a good person, with one explaining: ‘You are the only thing that can make a good person.’
When we took feedback, the class was immediately drawn into a debate centred around honesty. Would a good person just have honesty or a bit of dishonesty too? On initial thoughts, the majority of my class argued in favour of a good person having honesty only, with good reasons and examples to back it up. But one child threw a spanner in the works by saying, “If you are honest about everything then you might get into trouble. You may need a bit of dishonesty to protect yourself.” As well as using one of the sentence stems without prompt, this child’s comment had an immense impact on their peers. It influenced them to question their initial thoughts and begin to think in a completely different way. Of course, this was then reflected in the story by Delphi drinking too much kindness and Plato drinking too much confidence. The children could immediately draw on their learning about consequences the previous week and identify what the problems would be for our two main characters. When they decided to try the selfishness and cowardice potions, I heard audible gasps from the room and I knew this was because the children were thinking all about the drastic consequences that might have been.
I found that this chapter was particularly poignant at getting the children fully involved. As a teacher, I love to tell stories to my class and it is a joy to have a story to read that hooks in every single child for such an extensive time that they become emotionally invested in the characters and what they go through. The text for this lesson is perfect for doing just that. Firstly, the different virtues that are explored within the characters of Delphi and Plato are brilliant for using real characterisation when reading. Secondly, as suggested in the teacher’s guide notes, the children can actually experience the events themselves. I had made up some potions especially just for this lesson. All it had taken was some bottles of water mixed with food colouring, a variety of juices for the sweeter virtues and some balsamic vinegar for the bitterness of selfishness and the children were immersed in that world. I even managed to find some edible glitter to fill the mysterious red potion with to make it all the more intriguing! I don’t think my class quite believed me when I asked for some volunteers to actually try the potions but it didn’t take much convincing against it either! We had a Delphi and a Plato each time and as a class we would chant “1, 2, 3” and they would take a sip. It was all quite entertaining. The red potion in particular was the funniest, with almost all of them desperate to try it without even knowing what it might do to them. I allowed around eight children to try it in the end and if you know the story, you can imagine just how embarrassed they felt when they finally discovered what this mysterious potion was all about!! I had a lot of blushed faces and open mouths to end the lesson, that’s for sure.
All in all, a very enjoyable lesson that really challenged my class’ thinking. They had to consider all sorts of ‘what ifs?’ and ‘if…thens…’ , which not only built upon their discoveries from the previous lesson but also made small steps towards the goal of week 6’s lesson. We’ve been going for five weeks now and the progression I have seen in these children, who didn’t even know what philosophy was in September, has been amazing! Not only are they much better at actively listening and responding to each other’s ideas, they are now critically questioning their own ideas and daring to move their thinking in different directions. It is an absolute joy to be teaching them these important skills and I am having so much fun doing it!
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You can help you class discover virtue ethics by teaching this enquiry yourself! Download The Golden Mean Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below, or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next week, thanks for reading!
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Lesson Blog: The Wish
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everybody,
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This lesson was our first one back after half term, and so I was curious to see what the children had remembered from last time. Especially as it had been such a memorable lesson!
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This week we would be building on those skills in a lesson about a terrible wish, an overly enthusiastic god of wine and Delphi getting rather greedy. Except the lesson wasn’t about those things, really. It was actually about using ‘if’ and ‘then’, about how ideas improve when we change our minds, and about logic.
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The story was written to be a retelling of the famous myth of King Midas, who wished that everything he touched turned to gold. As, in at least some versions of the myth, it was the wine-god Dionysus who granted this wish, I thought it might be fun if Delphi got to meet him and see what she made of this wish.
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We start with a jealous Delphi, who is trying to find a suitable offering for the god and is cursing her lack of money. The warm-up discussion and question, what we would do if we had as much money as we wanted, surprised me. The children were keen to say they would help other children with their money, clearly still having the ideas around being a good person in their minds from last week (though there were quite a few, “I’m going to buy everything!” responses too!).
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At this point, Delphi goes to the shrine of Dionysus to place her offering of a slightly nibbled-on honey cake to the god. Eventually she ends up being given the famous question.
The children were quick to point out what was going to go wrong here. We’re still practising our ‘if’ and ‘then’ reasoning, a skill which I’ve really seen develop over the last few weeks.
Sure enough, the children were quite right and Delphi gets herself into a blind panic as she discovers the next morning that her wish had come true. She turns her clothes and a flower to gold, and feels excited, before trying to eat and drink, and she panics a bit, and then turns her dad to gold, and panics a lot.
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The children agreed she should go back to Dionysus and try and change her wish. Dionysus is somewhat worse-for-wear this morning, but agrees to help her. This gets us on to the biggest and most important question of today’s lesson.
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The purpose of this activity is to help the children understand that when we challenge an idea, it inspires us to make it better - more precise and more persuasive. Some children can find this very difficult at first, as they can feel like they’ve got something ‘wrong’ when someone challenges what they’ve said.
We start this gently, by using the word ‘except’, and Delphi does the same thing. I encouraged the children to work in pairs, suggesting a wish, and then their partner challenging it by identifying what could go wrong with it, and suggesting a better wish.
As we kept working at it, the children started to change the wish more and more. We got using a magic word to change something to gold (but what if you said it by accident?) and clapping to make a gold coin appear (but what happens if you were giving a round of applause?).
Some children wanted to build in a way of turning something back again in case there were any accidents (and get a unicorn out of it as well!)
We followed Delphi as she made these suggestions too, and more. How about a gold coin appears in her bedroom every five minutes?
By this time, the children’s wishes were getting more and more precise, and several children were starting to think that this maybe wasn’t a great wish to have after all. Delphi gives up on her wish and Dionysus agrees to forget the whole thing.
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By this point, the children were very aware of our new sentence stem, which we had been using throughout the lesson: “I’ve changed my mind because…” We shared some examples of when we had changed our minds during today’s lesson. No-one was feeling irritated by having to change our minds by this point.
We ended the lesson by asking whether having as much money as you liked was actually a good thing after all. One girl said, “It doesn’t matter because it’s love that’s important, like your friends and family.” The last picture of Delphi hugging her father, who had returned to normal, was spot on where the children had ended up today.
It was another really fun session where the story had taken the children on a journey to develop their thinking – particularly in the power of being able to change your mind.
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Over to Rosie, to see how her Year 5’s coped with the wish!
“What trouble is Delphi going to get into this week?” This was a genuine question asked by a child at the start of our philosophy lesson this week. It made everybody laugh and set the scene for what was going to be another disastrous episode for our young Athenian.
In this chapter, Delphi is sent to take an offering to the god Dionysus at his shrine behind his famous theatre. She feels embarrassed because her offering isn’t as extravagant as the others that have been left there and imagines what she could do instead if she was a wealthier. We had a class discussion about what it would be like to have all the money you ever wanted and what you would do with it. I expected that lots of the class would immediately jump onto the usual wild ideas of buying a sports car or getting a mansion but most of them said they would use the money to help other people like those that are homeless or can’t afford food. It was quite heartwarming actually. We managed to squeeze in a debate about whether money makes you happy. Lots of the class agreed that there was more to happiness than money but I was pleased to hear one child confidently respond to this by saying, “I’m not sure if money makes you completely happy because if you have too much it can make you greedy but also if you give your money to the poor then you’ve done something good so you would feel happy because of that.” It was an absolute jewel of an answer and it made lots of the other children begin to consider other examples where money could make you happy.
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Anyway, while Delphi is at the shrine, the statue to the god suddenly comes alive and (in a rather drunken state) offers her a wish that can help to make her and her father richer. Delphi ponders for a while and Dionysus suggests the famous King Midas wish: “I wish that everything I touch turns to gold.” When Delphi agreed to this, my whole class instantly burst out with protests to her decision. They could immediately identify the dangers and the room was filled with all sorts of ‘What ifs’. Not one of them felt it was good idea and of course, they turned out to be right.
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The children were then asked to consider changing the wish to make a perfect solution where Delphi could get as much gold as she needs with her golden touch without any bad consequences. This activity was a brilliant building block from our previous two lessons, which had all explored consequences, and now offered the chance to take an idea further by adapting it to change those consequences. It wasn’t easy for the children to think about and it required a lot of logical discussions with their partners or table groups. They were having to work really hard to push past those potentially dangerous outcomes of their wish.
We fed back as a class and realised that most of us had thought she should change her wish so that it would only turn the things she didn’t need to gold. Children from around the class could back up why this was the better of all other solutions but then one child said, “But what if she doesn’t need something today and then next week she needs it? She can’t use that thing anymore because it’s gold.” This changed everything and we were back to looking for an even better solution!
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A pair of children came up with the idea that Delphi should have the ability to turn things back from being gold. They were challenged by someone else as they identified that Delphi wanted the gold to get richer so if everything turned back to what it was then it would be pointless. Another group suggested, in response to what happens to Delphi’s dad and what could happen to her pet tortoise, that only inanimate objects should be turned to gold. This, however, led back to the problem of the apple and water. Delphi would end up having to eat food that was alive in order to survive!
Even though some of my class found this activity frustrating at times, they never gave up in finding a solution. Their minds were following the exact thought process I was looking for in this lesson and they were using the new sentence stem: ‘I’ve changed my mind because…’ I could see them desperate to help Delphi in her quest but equally not afraid to question and change their own thinking. This skill didn’t exist with some of these children a couple of weeks ago but with the help of our philosophy lessons it now does. I think this is such an important skill to be able to change your own mind and it can be applied in so many other areas of the curriculum too, for example science investigations or maths problem solving. Furthermore, it was a delight to see the class’ confidence grow in changing their minds, which in itself is so important!
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Overall, ‘The Wish’ provided a very powerful and thought provoking lesson with a fantastic story including a drunk Dionysus. They certainly found that part entertaining! The children’s thought processes were challenged in a different manner to how they have been before and I could definitely see the progress from beginning to end. I really feel like they are now philosophers in thought and with some abstract ideas coming up in future lessons, I am excited to see how they will take to them.
To help your children see the power of changing your mind, or if you just want to give your drunken Dionysus impression a go, you can download this enquiry by clicking the link below. Or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next week, thanks for reading!
(This enquiry started life as an enquiry from The If Machine by Peter Worley, at the Philosophy Foundation, which offers a goldmine of philosophy resources and training. Many thanks to Peter for supporting our work!)
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Lesson Blog: The Perfect Bedroom
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi again,
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​We loved putting this story together and it’s fair to say the children loved it too, though that may have had something to do with Delphi’s unicorn, which sent my unicorn-mad class of 7 and 8-year-olds almost delirious with excitement. But it’s a funny, surprising and, at times, scary story which is a huge amount of fun to read aloud. It also can have a huge impact on children’s learning. The purpose of this lesson is to take children from a concrete problem (designing a fantasy bedroom) to an abstract one (what is freedom and happiness). This is a really important step in the development of their reasoning.
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The questions in this enquiry also give lots of scope for a great range of responses. Later in the blog, Rosie will tell you how this was the breakthrough lesson with her Year 5’s in terms of abstract reasoning. For my Year 3’s, we focused on using our imaginations to think of new ideas and to realise that big ideas aren’t always as simple to understand as we think.
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After the warm-up discussion, where Delphi thinks about what would make her happy, a mysterious Builder offered us all the chance to design our own perfect bedroom. The children got stuck into this with gusto, filling their rooms with all sorts of wonderful things. But mainly unicorns. And fridges.
Along with Delphi, the children get two goes at this. It’s interesting to see how effective it is to repeat the activity after Delphi has more ideas about her own bedroom. As Delphi filled up with her increasingly enormous bedroom with unicorns, baby elephants, fields and dragons, so the children filled up theirs with discos and huge fridges. Throughout all this, we kept coming back to the same question – does it make you happy?
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Many children, despite filling their room with all sorts of delights, were keen to stress that they didn’t think it would make them perfectly happy. They generally felt it was family and friends that made them happy rather than possessions, and some children were starting to question whether we could ever be ‘perfectly’ happy however good our bedroom was.
But then comes the twist (spoiler alert!). When Delphi tries to leave her bedroom she finds the door locked and the Builder refusing to let her go out. This brings the big idea of ‘freedom’ into the mix – does it affect our happiness if we know we can’t get out? This is a reworking of a thought experiment by the philosopher John Locke (and of the philosophical enquiry ‘The Happy Prisoner’ in Peter Worley’s The If Machine).
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The children reacted very strongly to this revelation. Most children felt this would certainly affect their ability to be happy. This discussion can be taken in all sorts of directions. We focused on how this changed our happiness, and whether Delphi would still be happy even if she hadn’t tried to get out. Rosie delved into some much more abstract thinking about the connections between freedom and happiness with her Year 5’s. This is a great illustration how these stories can be used with different ages and abilities. So, I’m going to let Rosie tell you about the ending of the story this week!
You know when you get to the end of teaching a lesson and you just think to yourself ‘wow’? Well, that was me for Delphi lesson number seven: ‘The Perfect Bedroom’. We broke through so many boundaries in this lesson and stretched our thinking to levels beyond any discussion we have yet had in that classroom. I was absolutely amazed by the level of dialogue and critical thought my Year 5s were able to reach mostly independently in just one hour. It was incredible. So here’s what happened…
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In this chapter, Delphi is visited by a rather strange visitor (think spooky monk mixed with a touch of the ghost-of-Christmas-yet-to-come.) This character, a bizarre builder with an unrecognisable accent, offers to build Delphi a bedroom beyond her dreams. Immediately, Delphi, although sceptical, jumps onto this idea and begins imagining what her new room could look like. Of course, we couldn’t allow Delphi to do this without the children experiencing it as well – so off they went to design their very own bedroom too! It all started quite tame, with some just saying “Well, I’d make my bed bigger” or “I’d have my games console attached to the wall so I wouldn’t have to get it out again.” But then came the children who dared to take greater steps – “I’d have a candy floss machine!” “What about a slide in the middle of the room?” “Can I have a cinema screen?” The answer was yes! Philosophy is all about the freedoms of thought, so why not?
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The children were definitely hyped up and excited by their bedrooms and when I asked them if they were happy, the majority were nodding their heads like one of those dogs you put on your car dashboard. There were a few, however, who could see some flaws with their bedrooms and weren’t entirely sure if they were happy. For example, one child said, “I’m not sure yet because I think I’d need a friend to be happy so I would ask for a friend to share my bedroom for me.” It was interesting to see right in front of me the effect of that comment as I could make out that a few were starting to doubt their own happiness with their own bedrooms. I knew that this was the exact point to plough on with our story as similar thoughts would soon cross Delphi’s mind too.
When Delphi is visited once again by the mysterious builder, he says he can make the room even more perfect so that she is happier. Delphi can’t believe it and goes wilder with her ideas, including asking for her friends to be part of her bedroom and an array of exotic pets to join her too. This suddenly led to the bedrooms that had been designed in my classroom becoming zoos for some children, some added waterslides and swimming pools, others wanted race tracks or an all-you-can-eat buffet. Again, I posed the question: “are you happy?” and I was met with lots of satisfied grins. They had everything they wanted! Who wouldn’t be happy?
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Well, a child, who had been sitting rather uncomfortably during the design phase of the lesson, put their hand up and offered an intriguing answer: “I am happy but I am also unhappy. I am happy because I have all that I want but I am unhappy too because my big bedroom might have taken up all the space in the rest of the house. My family might not have enough space to live in because of my bedroom. I think it’s quite selfish.” This was absolutely where the lesson was aiming to reach – the children giving two possible answers, agreeing and disagreeing with an idea. I asked the children to reflect on this answer and was immediately bombarded with lots of answers that now considered both sides of the argument. It is fascinating how one seed of an idea that sprout out so many other ideas.
So we were quite confident in offering two ideas and so we ventured on into the climax of the story, where Delphi discovers that, although she has everything she would ever want, she is in fact locked inside that perfect bedroom. The gasps and protests that raptured when I reached that part of the story were quite terrifying to be on the other side of. It felt like the ceiling had collapsed in on the classroom and the children suddenly realised their perfect bedroom wasn’t so perfect after all. We discussed why as a class and this led us to the word ‘freedom’. What do we mean by freedom? Is freedom important? Is freedom more important than happiness? Without even thinking about it, Year 5 had entered the world of abstract thought. Here are some of the responses we heard:
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“I think freedom is getting to go where you want so Delphi isn’t free and she can’t be happy.”
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“I don’t think Delphi can be happy in her bedroom because she is locked in and won’t ever see her father again”
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“To be happy, you have to be free and to be free, you have to be happy.” – this response amazed the whole class and we tried to think of situations where this would be true or untrue.
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“If Delphi wishes her dad to be part of her bedroom then she would be free and happy.”
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There were lots of different reactions to this idea of freedom and with each response, new doors were opened within the concept. One child said, “I think Delphi is free in her bedroom because she made her own choices.” This was interesting because it led to us to really unpicking our understanding of freedom. Up until this point, the children had understood freedom as being the idea that you can go wherever you want to, but now we were considering other forms of freedom, such as the idea of being able to choose something for yourself. I had no idea that we would reach this point in our thinking this lesson and it just shows how complex thought can become from a certain starting point. We even got so far in our discussions that we began considering answers to the question: “Is it possible for us to build freedom?”
Sadly, as is always the case, we did eventually run out of time to delve further (and I am sure we could have done for days) but I was so interested that I asked them all to jot down what they thought freedom was. I knew this would be a big topic for our next Delphi lesson so it was definitely a good opportunity to see where they all stood on the matter. My favourite answer from the many I collected had to be “I don’t know what it is because I don’t know what freedom is.” An answer Socrates would have been proud of!
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This week my class truly astounded me and I am so excited to continue are journey into more abstract ideas after our half term break. On our final day before the break, we had some time to reflect on what we had enjoyed during our first half term of Year 5 and one girl answered, “I’ve just REALLY loved Delphi!” We couldn’t ask for much more!
Whether it’s developing children’s imaginations, teaching them how to reason with abstract ideas, or just getting massively excited about unicorns, The Perfect Bedroom is definitely one of our favourite Delphi enquiries!
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If you want to read the story yourself, you can download this enquiry by clicking the link below. Or, as ever, you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next week, thanks for reading!
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(This enquiry started life as an enquiry from The If Machine by Peter Worley, at the Philosophy Foundation, which offers a goldmine of philosophy resources and training. Many thanks to Peter for supporting our work!)​
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Lesson Blog: Zeus
Discover the story by clicking here!
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​Hi everyone,
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We’re up to week 8 of our lesson blogs, and it’s amazing now to see how far the children have come. It really struck me this week how much the previous sessions had prepared them for this week, where we take on some properly abstract problems, as well as some classic philosophical questions. The learning focus for this session takes the children from responding to big questions with their own opinions, to responding to philosophical arguments.
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As you’ll see, they did a remarkable job. By the end of the lesson my class of mostly 7-year olds were reasoning and explaining ideas clearly about ideas of God, freedom, determinism and free will. As their teacher, I found it all rather thrilling to be honest!
The opening discussion asks the children to consider the most ‘free’ person they could imagine, building on the ideas about freedom which we developed during the last session. The children were confident in giving their response, and we got a range of responses, from adults to animals and robots. One child suggested “Angels because they can go anywhere and do anything,” while another clearly knew which direction we were heading in as he suggested “All the gods who have ever lived, all rolled up together.”
For this session, we lead the children in creating a mind map of their ideas, helping them to keep track of their thinking and make links between the different ideas as they arise. To start with, it looks something like this.
The story this week follows Delphi as she dreams her way to Olympus, to meet the gods so she can plead for Socrates’ freedom.
As well as admiring Rosie’s gorgeous illustrations of Olympus, we also reflected on whether gods really can do anything. Was there anything they definitely wouldn’t be able to do? In previous years and with older children, we’ve had suggestions like ‘destroy themselves and then come back to life’ – but this year the children wanted to focus on the moral questions around free will. One particularly interesting discussion explored whether gods could control people. The children didn’t realise they were talking about free will and determinism, of course. But they were.
From here, as Delphi meets Zeus and accidentally goads him into trying to achieve something impossible, we started to add ideas about ‘impossible’ to our mind map too. This discussion and activity is really about logic – can we come up with an idea which doesn’t make logical sense in reality?
Once they’d heard a couple of ideas from Delphi (who is always on hand to help in the story if children are initially struggling for ideas), the children soon got the hang of it. Suggestions started from having loud, quiet music or giant, tiny playdough, to this powerful image: “You can’t make infinite people go on you,” and then the very clever: “It’s impossible to have something that’s impossible but also possible.” It got a round of applause.
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This led us to a philosophical classic about the nature of omnipotence.
It took a bit of unpicking, but soon the children were able to explain what the problem is – if Zeus creates the indestructible boulder then there is something he cannot do, namely, destroy the boulder. But if he can’t make the boulder indestructible, then there is still something he cannot do. You could practically see the light bulbs appearing over the children’s heads as it clicked.
Delphi and Socrates’ conversation then turns to the subject of free will and our mind maps were getting more and more full by the minute.
The discussion that followed was the most advanced the children had ever achieved. We started philosophy lessons a couple of months ago. Now the children’s ideas were advancing so quickly, I could barely keep up with them.
One boy made reference to a ‘brain in a jar’ – another famous image of philosophy, and one this 7-year-old had just reinvented for himself. The children led the discussion back to the idea of money, and how this might affect free will.
I have to admit, by this point I was getting goose bumps.
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By the time Delphi was saying farewell to the gods, the children were arguing about some of the biggest questions we can ask. Are we in control of our own actions? Does the existence of god destroy the idea of free will? Is freedom a necessary condition of being alive? Are we in control of our brain or is our brain in control of us?
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Not bad for a group of seven-year olds who have been practising philosophy for only a couple of months! Keep reading to discover how Rosie’s Year 5 class responded – and how they took it even further.
The children were very happy to dive straight back into Delphi after our half term break. They were especially excited to recognise a familiar name on the board at the start of the lesson – Zeus. Doing Delphi Philosophy alongside our history topic has been perfect this year. It’s really helped the children understand the context of Delphi’s story and the significance for the people of that time in world history. I also have felt the sense that the children are almost living what they are learning about Greek life through Delphi too, which is an added bonus. Well, this week, we would be using our prior knowledge of the Greek gods and goddesses to power us through the lesson!
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This chapter begins with Delphi having a grand idea to sleep in a temple overnight in hope that she would receive some help from the gods to free Socrates. Lots of children felt this made sense. Lots of children thought she was mad. Quite normal reactions I have come to expect. Lots of scope for debate. As she’s drifting to sleep, Delphi begins to think about what a completely free being would be like. Freedom was an abstract concept that had been fed into the previous chapter, The Perfect Bedroom, and it was going to be the main focus of this lesson too.
I allowed the children time to brainstorm their responses to Delphi’s thoughts. Quite unexpectedly, the majority of the class thought that somebody who was completely free would be arrogant and selfish. They felt it wasn’t a good thing to be completely free. One boy was very confident with his answer and said: “Red lights would mean nothing to a completely free person. They would be selfish and crash into other people because they didn’t care.” It was fantastic to see so many of the children immediately jumping into giving examples to support their ideas and consider consequences completely independently. The skills from previous lessons are clearly having an impact. Another child’s response was interesting because they said that it depends on the type of person. A good person who is completely free would be better than a bad person who is completely free. This led to a discussion about whether freedom makes you a good person or not. It didn’t take long for us to begin thinking about what being completely free actually means. I was absolutely blown away when one child let out: “Well, we can’t EVER be completely free because our souls will always be trapped by our bodies.” Jaws literally dropped. All I was thinking to myself was: This is a nine year old. The development and the confidence the children had worked on since our very first discussion eight weeks ago to push their thinking is just phenomenal!
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Anyway before I get too carried away, back to the story where Delphi wakes up and finds herself unexpectedly in Olympus, surrounded by all of the gods and goddesses she believed in (although not as she would have predicted them to be.) As a side note, the picture of this scene is perhaps my most favourite scene that I illustrated out of the whole story. It was so fun to bring to life all of the amazing (and surprising) ideas that David had imagined these gods to be doing, including a couple playing table tennis and one of them knitting! I wanted to create an image that captured all this madness in one scene and it was so satisfying to see the awe and laughter that came from the children first laying eyes on it. It gave a totally different take on the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece compared to the grand, mystifying paintings and sculptures that are famous from the time. It provided a lot of humour to the story.
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As Delphi approaches the door the great, golden office of Zeus with Athena at her side, she begins to think about the gods. Is there anything a god cannot do? The children were given some more time to add to their brainstorms a response to this question. Immediately, they recognised that if gods were immortal then they couldn’t die. However, a few mythology experts in the room challenged this idea and identified certain Greek gods who were known to have died, for example Zeus’ father. Some said that gods can’t destroy the universe but were instantly responded with the argument that perhaps they could and they just were choosing not to. Then came an absolute corker: “the gods can’t be me, and they can’t be you. If they were me then I wouldn’t be me.” BAM – we were into the realm of personhood and identity. It was astonishing the leaps we were taking into abstract thought, it felt like a lesson that could have gone on for years as the class pushed deeper and deeper into the concepts we were exploring.
Delphi, quite bravely, dares to ask Zeus, the king of gods, if there is anything a god cannot do. After Zeus chooses to laugh it off, she asks if he can make a square circle. At this, Zeus gets rather angry because that idea is logically impossible. You cannot have a square circle. This idea then challenged the children to begin thinking about other ideas that Delphi could suggest that would be logically impossible. Admittedly, the class found this very tricky as it is such a difficult concept to think about! We worked together to come up with some suggestions, including a flat mountain or a straight curve. Delphi takes it one step further however and challenges Zeus to create a boulder he couldn’t pick up. Rather foolishly without thinking, Zeus snaps his fingers and all at once his office is filled with a gigantic immovable boulder. Zeus tries to pick it up but can’t. Delphi has proved her point.
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Things quickly move onto the reason why Delphi had come to see Zeus in the first place – Socrates. If gods can do most things, surely he can free Socrates? Zeus admits that he can’t due to free will. It is Socrates’ choice that he wants to remain in jail, he can’t change that. This was a poignant moment for my class as free will had been brought up in our previous Delphi lesson by a couple of children as being the definition of freedom – making a choice for yourself. We had a short discussion on whether it was fair of the gods to give humans free will or whether it would be easier if things had been decided for them already.
Although Delphi didn’t find the answer to her problem just yet, a lot was gained from her experiences this lesson. The children learnt and explored deeper into the concept of freedom and began to use logic in their thinking. Their ability to listen and respond to other’s ideas in a more mature and coherent manner was particularly effective this lesson. They weren’t afraid to challenge themselves and others in their thinking with many taking brave steps into unknown territory. This lesson very much felt like we were on a journey together as one. We had so many ‘wow’ moments from individual children – it made me so proud to be their teacher. I love that I can share my passion for philosophy with them and that they can come on this journey with me. Every person has an inner philosopher, no matter how young (or beardless) you are.
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You can tackle these big questions, and meet Zeus yourself, by teaching this enquiry to your class too! Download the Zeus Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below, or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next time, thanks for reading!​
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Lesson Blog: Miletus
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi everyone,
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The weeks are ticking by and we are getting towards the conclusion of Delphi the Philosopher with our classes. By this point, I’ve become more and more aware of the progress the children have made. We had a real breakthrough in our lesson last week, where the children started to argue about abstract ideas confidently. I was hoping we’d be able to build on these skills this week as we take on a full philosophical dialogue. Enter one of the men responsible for Socrates’ arrest: Miletus.
This story was written as a classic Socratic dialogue, with Delphi playing the part of Socrates. This was actually one of the first chapters I wrote – I was really keen to see if I could make Plato’s approach to philosophy accessible even to seven-year-old children. It begins with Delphi and Plato in the Agora, thinking about what isn’t fair. Delphi thinks of lots of examples, and the children do too – mostly about their brothers and sisters getting more time on the tablet than they did, though a few thought it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t have superpowers!
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Delphi, putting on a suspiciously charming persona, asks Miletus what ‘fair’ means, just as Socrates used to when meeting people in the Agora.
The challenge for the children is to see whether they can think of an example which breaks this definition – something that seems to be fair, but involves people being treated differently. This is a different skill for the children than they have practised before as now they are using their abstract thinking to evaluate a philosophical argument instead of coming up with their own. The children came up with an interesting range of examples!
Two of the children had a long discussion about soya milk. One had a sister who had a dairy allergy, so they had different milk to each other. Was that fair? They agreed it certainly wouldn’t be fair if they were both treated the same in this case – either one sister would get an allergic reaction, or if they both had to have soy milk, then that wouldn’t be fair because the other sister hated the taste of it!
It was great to hear the children engaging with the logic of this enquiry. As the story continues, Delphi agrees with the children that this definition doesn’t always work, so Miletus tries again. This time he suggests being fair is “treating people as they deserve to be treated.”
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The children found this harder, but the great thing about Delphi is that the story is always there to support the children when they need it. After hearing a bit more of the story, it started to click what might be wrong with this definition.
It was a classic ‘circular definition’, and I drew this out for them on the board. Bit by bit, more and more children were able to try and explain this. We continued the story and Miletus has a third go, this time saying fair is “knowing how to treat people.” While some children agreed with this definition, there were also some children starting to see the problem we were encountering here.
Another boy agreed, saying that we had come up with three different definitions and “we don’t know what’s the best one.” How can we decide which definition is best, or even, fair? It was great to see the children’s evaluation skills working even at this abstract level now – something they simply would not have been able to do a few weeks ago. This was obvious to us all, as something finally dawns on Delphi at the end of the chapter.
This moment struck a chord with many of the children, and it was one of those lessons where the children kept wanting to tell me what Socrates meant even as we were lining up to go home. When I asked the children, a few weeks later, which enquiries they had particularly enjoyed, this one came up often. It is a very simple story compared to some of others, but many enjoyed the process of having an idea, challenging it, and creating a better idea. In other words, it wasn’t just the story and the jokes they had enjoyed. What had captured their imaginations was the process of doing philosophy itself.
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These sorts of enquiries work really well for almost any age group – over to Rosie and her Year 5 class:
I have been looking forward to this lesson for quite a while now, particularly since my class had been showing signs of abstract thought from around the Perfect Bedroom lesson. This week was all about abstract thinking and determining an understanding for the idea of ‘fairness’ so I was excited to see where our lesson would take us today. I am happy to tell you now, it did not disappoint!
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“It’s not fair” becomes quite a catch phrase and so I asked the children what they thought wasn’t fair about the world they experience today. I was immediately met with a range of hands, desperate to tell me what they thought. “It’s not fair I have to get up early.” “It’s not fair that adults can decide when they have a day off.” “It’s not fair that my sister gets to watch TV longer than I do.” Then came the more brutal ones. “It’s not fair that I have a sister!” “It’s not fair that I have to go to bed early and my parents watch TV too loud!” I have to say though, I wasn’t expecting a nine year old to then say: “Brexit isn’t fair!”
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So, after we let all of our griefs off our chests, we continue to follow Delphi. What follows is something quite marvellous and I absolutely loved reading it to my class. By the time we came to share our responses, it was quite clear that many children felt that Miletus’ first definition wasn’t an accurate description of what fair means. Here are some responses we heard:
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“If someone did a crime and went to jail then to be fair to them everyone would have to go to jail.”
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“If a child was getting bullied then everyone would get bullied as well.”
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“If we were all treated the same then we wouldn’t be able to have competitions or our class raffle draw.”
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“Socrates was put in jail for asking questions so Delphi should be too because she’s asking questions now.”
There was one idea, however, that could save Miletus. Cake! We discussed how if we had a class cake to split between the 31 of us and I had a quarter and everyone else had the remaining three quarters shared between them, would that be fair? Of course not! A child then argued as a result of this that everyone needs to have food so even a bad person should be treated the same as a good person so they can survive. I asked them then to rate the definition out of 10. Most children concluded that this argument had some credibility but also some flaws so it wasn’t an absolutely accurate definition for what is fair. It was interesting that one child still gave the argument nine out of ten and I asked her why. She replied, “It wouldn’t be fair to disagree with Miletus because then we wouldn’t be treating him the same as everyone else. Most of us agree with one another so we should agree with him.” It did bring a smile to my face to see that application!
Of course, Delphi works this out too and Miletus, realising his mistake, changes his idea. He states this time that ‘Fair is when every person is treated as they deserve to be treated.’ Again, I asked the class their opinions and whether this would work in practise. Here’s what happened:
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Firstly, quite a lot of children agreed this was more accurate than the previous definition. Some of them were happily writing down suggestions like if a baby was to hit someone, they wouldn’t be punished in the same way as someone older would be. Conversations and discussions were getting stronger within the room and there was definitely a buzz of debate present. At one point I had to intervene when two boys, who were passionately arguing for separate sides, were starting to get louder and louder in their discussion! (They shook hands and agreed to disagree with one another!)
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When it came to sharing as a class, this was a real highlight. The children seemed to take on ownership for the debate themselves, with lots directly replying to other children’s ideas and challenging them with further questions like Delphi was doing with Miletus in the story. There was so much discussion and so many different scenarios brought up that I couldn’t possibly write it down. One girl’s argument did stand out for me though in response to this second definition. She thought that Miletus’ second version was just the same as the first version. She argued that first of all, it was difficult to know what people deserved and so as a result, people would be treated the same. Saying that people are treated by what they deserve, is still treating them the same. She had applied her logic and critical thinking and had judged this argument to be as flawed as the first.
She wasn’t the only one either. Delphi isn’t satisfied either and ‘helps’ Miletus to think of the final definition. This time it said: “Fair is knowing how to treat people.”
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So we went through the same routine again, did this argument work? Quite a lot of children felt this was the most accurate definition so far. One said, “I agree because if you didn’t know how to treat people then you might treat them badly.” Another said, “I agree because if you know how you want to be treated then that’s how you would treat people and that is fair.” There were still quite a few who disagreed however. Lots asked the question: “How do you know how to treat people?” In response to this, a child argued that it comes down to education and that’s why a baby, who hasn’t had an education, wouldn’t be punished in the same way as a child would be if they did something unfair to someone else. I was quite interested to read another child’s response, however, who was beginning to think about animals in their answer. He wrote down, “this is not always true because how would you treat things like animals?”
All in all, it was a very lively and thought provoking lesson for my Year 5s. I was particularly proud to see their development in their discussion and debate skills, which although at times got a little heated, was respectful and progressive. All of the children were taking brave steps in daring to question and challenge each other as well as using a lot of application to test ideas in real life contexts. It was a joy to teach from beginning to end and I am looking forward to using our persuasive and debating skills next week!
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You can take on Miletus and develop your children’s logical skills by teaching this enquiry to your class too! Download the Miletus Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below, or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next time, thanks for reading!
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Lesson Blog: The Escape
Discover the story by clicking here!
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​Hi again,
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This week, we delved into the climax of Delphi’s story – not just in terms of the action but also in terms of a culmination of everything the children have learned in recent weeks. We teach this chapter over two lessons, though it could be covered in one, because we want to give the children lots of time to develop their skills of presenting and persuading. But more of that a little later…
Time is running out for Socrates and his friends have put together an escape plan. This chapter is (very) loosely based on Plato’s Crito, but of course from a very different perspective. Delphi is desperate to help free Socrates, and by this point, most of the children were too. However, they were much less sure whether Socrates escaping would really be his best move. What leaped out at me was how far we had come on this journey. At the start of Delphi, a couple of months before, the children were giving single word answers and not responding to each other. Now look at them.
Delphi’s job in the escape plan is to cause a distraction, but she quickly decides this isn’t enough. Instead, she will give a speech. She feels that if she can simply be persuasive enough, then maybe she could get the people of Athens to free him.
We commenced some serious brain-storming. What could we say to persuade everyone that Socrates should be free? The children were quick to come up with a range of ideas, some focusing on the moral question, others focusing on why Socrates himself was leading a good life which would benefit others.
As Delphi practises her speech, it quickly becomes apparent that it isn’t just what we say, but how we say it too. Socrates would have hated this of course, but Plato tells Delphi about the famous sophists – persuasive speakers who were often employed to put forward their employer’s agenda in the heated debates of democratic Athens.
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We finished the first lesson by learning some of these skills – how to stand straight and look confident, how to speak clearly, pitch our voice and not bury our nose in our notes. While not philosophical skills exactly, roleplaying these essential skills with children can be very powerful. Suddenly children you never expected can present themselves confidently and present their ideas persuasively.
We saw the results the following week. After a brief practise, we continued the story, seeing Delphi’s nerves rise as the time approaches for her own speech (and bumping into a few familiar faces along the way). I loved this part of the lesson – there was a real sense of anticipation in the air as Delphi nervously clambered up on to her stage and tried to get the attention of the initially disinterested crowd. Delphi finally gets their attention, but before we here from her, it’s the children’s turn to present their speeches first.
Many of the children were nervous, but in a way that made them very proud of themselves when they’d finished. It was so lovely to see the children being so supportive of each other and they joined in fantastically. Again, they simply wouldn’t have been able to do this a few months ago. But then, it was Delphi’s turn.
I had great fun writing Delphi’s speech. It’s full of little references and nods to the real-life Delphi and Socrates – not least the ‘know yourself’ line which was famously carved on the Temple of Apollo at the site of the Oracle at Delphi. The children watched in that open-mouthed way that tells a storyteller that they’re doing something right. The air was electric as we continued the story to hear the response to Delphi’s speech…
This was one of my favourite storytelling moments of the whole book (though it did take a little while for the children to forgive me for leaving it on a cliffhanger, and in one over-excited case, to let go of my leg).
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It had been another very memorable week, and with only one chapter to go, each Delphi session was starting to feel more and more special.
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Over to Rosie’s Year 5 class – and for the first time in this series of blogs, we have some wonderful pictures and videos of this class too! Enjoy!
‘The Escape’ is a chapter I always look forward to reading and exploring with a class. This year it was no different. Not only does this chapter allow the children to take on their own independent role in the quest to free Socrates but also we are able to spread out the learning across two weeks. I will talk about both lessons individually to show you the full picture!
Lesson 1
The first lesson focuses on persuasion - a skill which is quite a prominent focus within Year 5 writing, so I knew that this lesson would be developing understanding today that they would be able to apply in other areas of the curriculum outside of the philosophy lesson.
The lesson begins with Delphi and Plato encountering Phaedo, Socrates’ friend right back from the very first chapter. He tells them that they are planning on helping Socrates to escape his prison cell without being spotted. He asks Delphi and Plato to come up with a distraction. At this point in the story, I paused and asked my children what they thought the distraction could be.
Soon, we discover Delphi’s actual plan, which is to make a speech trying to convince the people of Athens why Socrates should be free. The children were asked to think about what Delphi should say to persuade the other citizens. I allowed them to go off in pairs and brainstorm what reasons she could give for why he should be free. It was interesting how most of them began in the same place: “Socrates should be free because he was only just asking questions.” But then, a few started to think outside of the box and began to consider things like his family or his happiness. It didn’t take long before some went further and started to explain the meanings of terms like criminal and how that applied to Socrates’ situation. It was pleasing to see them making use of the skills they used during the ‘Miletus’ lesson about exploring the meaning of concepts and seeing how true they are. Some even used their understanding of fairness from last lesson to discuss its implication for Socrates’ freedom.
With the help of Plato, Delphi then learns how to be deliver a speech based on the characteristics the Sophists used back in Ancient Greece. What I love about this part, is that the children also take part in Plato’s lesson. We learnt how to stand with our feet shoulder width apart. We learnt where to look when we are speaking. We learnt how to use our notes so that they were useful but not intrusive. Then the children went off to practise and apply these new skills in preparation for next week’s delivery!
Lesson 2
The children were excited that today we were going to deliver some of our speeches to persuade the people to free Socrates. This lesson begins with Delphi getting prepared outside the prison, where a large crowd has already began to gather. It is here that we reencounter some familiar faces – those bizarre philosophers from lesson two. I have to say the class were quite thrilled to reunite with Diogenes and were surprised he was out of his barrel for once! Anyway, a stage was set up opposite the prison and with some encouragement from Plato, Delphi steps up to begin her speech.
This was a chance for the children to then complete their final practises of their own speech. It was great to see them applying their skills from last lesson and rehearsing their reasons for why Socrates should be free. There was still blatant enthusiasm in the classroom for the job at hand and a buzz of anticipation for those that were about to share.
After the excitement of our own speeches, we settled down to finally hear what Delphi had to say on the matter. Reading her speech to the class was quite inspiring. All of them were fully attentive throughout and I even heard a few mutter in agreement with what she was saying. I could tell for some of them it was quite satisfying to hear Delphi making points that they had also come up with for persuading the crowd to free Socrates.
However, Delphi is unfortunately interrupted rather dramatically during her speech by the sudden arrival of Miletus, who, after his previous bad experience with Delphi, tries to stop her from convincing the crowd that the decision he had made about Socrates was wrong. Luckily, Delphi’s friends have her back and Myrtis decided it was time for Miletus’ comeuppance. The reaction in the classroom when he falls into that horse poo was just hilarious! There were even cheers of congratulations.
At the end of her speech, the children were asked whether they thought she had done a good job. I allowed them to discuss with the person sat next to them and it was interesting to hear a variety of different responses. Some thought she had done incredibly well, where as some, having recognised that Socrates had no reappeared from the prison door, felt that she had tried but had not been successful.
At the end of the session, the children discovered that although Delphi’s speech had been incredibly, it hadn’t fully succeeded in its purpose. Phaedo returns and tells Delphi and Plato that Socrates won’t leave. We talked about why this might be the case.
This chapter ends on a bit of cliff hanger, with Phaedo explaining that Socrates wanted to speak to Delphi. The children quite literally screamed at me when I closed the book, obviously eagerly anticipating what would happen next. I felt like this lesson they had truly taken a vital role in the story themselves and so they were living it out alongside Delphi. This emotional investment, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, is one of the greatest aspects of Delphi the Philosopher.
‘The Escape’ chapter is one of my favourites because it quite possibly has one of the greatest impacts on the children’s overall education. Over these last two lessons, the children had learnt how to be persuasive and present their arguments in a clear and concise way. These skills are not only applicable in other subjects where persuasion plays an important role but also help in preparing children for their futures. The skills they have used in these lessons, particularly the second lesson, are helping them to develop confidence for speaking in public – something that a lot of them will encounter as they move to secondary school and beyond. As the children delivered their speeches, it didn’t feel like they were just 9 or 10 year olds, it felt like they were much more mature and grown up. Philosophy isn’t just about asking big questions but also about putting your point across in well-reasoned manner. I am excited to see how the children’s learning from today is shown in our future time together this year.
Thanks for reading about all our adventures – we had so much to say! But don’t forget, you can teach your children to be persuasive speakers and share this experience by teaching this enquiry to your class too! Download ‘The Escape’ Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below, or you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Until next time, thanks for reading!
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Lesson Blog: Hemlock
Discover the story by clicking here!
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Hi again,
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Well, here we are at the last lesson blog of this series and the last lesson of Delphi the Philosopher. This week, not only do we see the conclusion of the story, but we really see how far the children have come on their journey to become philosophers too. If you’ve read the series of lesson blogs, you will have seen the extraordinary reaction from the children about these lessons – and today’s conclusion didn’t disappoint either.
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We re-join Delphi as she is finally taken to speak to Socrates. The whole story is something of a reworking of Plato’s dialogues about the last days of Socrates, particularly the Apology, Crito and Phaedo, but this chapter follows these more closely. I was always intrigued by a line in Phaedo when it said Socrates took a bath and then spoke to the women in his household, though this conversation is not recounted. This is then, what could have happened, if Delphi had been there. Firstly, why did he have a bath?
OK, I know – it’s a cheap laugh. But it does have some historical accuracy. One of the few recorded stories about Xanthippe is that she did indeed empty a chamber pot over his head. In any case, we use this opportunity to discuss why is she is so angry and start to let the reality sink in: Socrates is going to die, having had the chance to escape. The rest of the story, and this lesson, is simply trying to answer the question: why?
Delphi has a moment of reflection while Socrates has his bath, and we considered what it is that Delphi should say to him. The children were still quite keen to encourage Socrates to escape at this point, and most felt he certainly should do so.
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When the moment comes, Delphi is taken off guard by how calm and cheerful Socrates is. Delphi on the other hand, realises she is quite overwhelmingly angry and demands to know why he wouldn’t escape when he had the chance. Socrates, in a very Socrates way, reframes the question. He says the question isn’t whether he should live or die, but is it better to die a philosopher? Should he really give up on his philosophy just to extend his life?
This debate would run through the rest of the lesson. One thing we like to do in Delphi sessions is change the way we set up debates – sometimes we sit in a circle, sometimes on the carpet, sometimes at tables. Sometimes we have roles, and sometimes we roleplay a debate. This time I gave the children the chance to choose where they sat – were they mostly agreeing with Socrates, Delphi or (importantly) were they somewhere in between?
Delphi tells Socrates she has three reasons why he should stay alive, and we consider and debate these in turn. This is where the children’s experience and skill at doing philosophy, something we have been developing through this story for the last twelve weeks, really came to the fore. Their confidence to justify their thinking, the flexibility to change their mind, and the evaluative and analytic thinking they show when the answer ‘somewhere in the middle’ was fantastic to see. As their teacher, I know it’s something they could not do before these lessons, and it is something we will continue to do in many more lessons in the future.
These debates led to plenty of children changing their minds. Socrates justifies his decision – that it would hurt his family more if he escaped and incriminated them, and then that the non-philosophical life (or indeed, the unexamined life) is not worth living. As we went through these debates it was striking that more and more children started to agree with Socrates – but many more wanted to find the middle ground.
By the time we got to the third and final argument, that Socrates should be free to choose rather than be forced to die, many children were very hesitant to make a final choice. However, many of them agreed that Socrates should be free to make his choice (making some great links to our previous sessions about freedom). Some children gave some terrific examples of this – one boy saying that Socrates would always take the good path over a bad path if he had the choice (something Socrates would’ve agreed with, of course). Another girl put forward the idea if Socrates died, he would continue to be a philosopher even after death. Again, Socrates would like this argument – much of the Phaedo is spent justifying his belief in the afterlife – but even in terms of reputation, this has proved true.
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All too soon, Delphi and Socrates conversation, and our debate, came to an end. Socrates returns to the men in the next room to drink his hemlock and… I’m going to hand you over to Rosie and her Year 5 class to tell you how the story ends. I wouldn’t want to spoil it.
I couldn’t believe it was the final week of Delphi Philosophy and nor could the children! I was excited, however, as I knew that this would be the week where lots of questions would be solved, lots of the previous chapters would come together and all of the skills the children had learnt over the weeks would be applicable in a big debate between Delphi and her hero, Socrates. After our cliff-hanger from last lesson, the children were keen to see whether Delphi would be able to convince Socrates to leave his prison cell.
Delphi and Plato arrive in the prison and oversee a rather dramatic encounter between Socrates and his wife, Xanthippe. Xanthippe is fuming with her husband for being so selfish – she is so mad that she throws a chamber pot all over Socrates! The class were both horrified and amazed – it took us a while to get over it. The children were asked why they thought she was so angry as a starter question this lesson. They could tell it was because Socrates had chosen to leave her bringing up their children alone and not considered the pain it would cause his family if he were to die. This provided a starting point for Delphi in her journey for this chapter.
Delphi must then wait for Socrates to clean himself off before she can finally have her audience with him. It’s an anxious wait and it definitely felt like the children could feel that. This chapter is unlike any of the other chapters. It’s a serious matter yet it takes the reader through all sorts of emotions including despair, anger and happiness. I felt like this was the chapter that truly showed how invested the children were in Delphi’s quest to free Socrates and with all their attention on me reading the story it was obvious that they were well and truly hooked. While the children waited for his arrival, they were asked to think about what Delphi should say to Socrates.
When the children meet Socrates again, he seems no different to the first time they met back in the Prologue. This ugly, yet gentle, philosopher appears unaffected by the misery that awaits him. Immediately, Delphi gets angry with Socrates and lets out her frustration at his stubbornness. She has worked so hard to get him out of jail and prove it to the people of Athens that naturally she feels cheated. Socrates tries to calm her down by suggesting they discuss reasons for him to be free in a philosophical manner. He deduces that the real question Delphi is asking is: Should Socrates give up on philosophy to stay alive? This was it, our first proper discussion point and it well and truly started off with a bang.
It was interesting and exciting to have so many different answers at this point. It was quite clear that the children weren’t afraid to give their own opinion and were able to extend each other’s points of views as well. This was only just the beginning of the journey in debate we would have during this lesson and there was a real sense of enthusiasm and confidence amongst the class to get our teeth into the arguments we would discuss.
In our next steps of the story, Delphi tries to give Socrates three reasons why he should leave prison. With each point, Socrates presents a counter argument for why it is better for him to take the poison. At the end of each argument, the children were asked to discuss who they thought they agreed with and why. The first point Delphi makes is that Socrates is causing pain to his family by taking the poison. Socrates argues that he’d actually hurt them more if escaped prison because the guards would be after them as well. This set us up for our next debate and it produced a wide range of possibilities and arguments as you will see in the next video.
The next point Delphi makes is that living a life without philosophy is surely better than being dead. Socrates defends his standpoint by arguing that it would be like turning the switch off in his brain and not being allowed to think for himself again. As I read this part, I could hear children around the room whispering in agreement or disagreement with the points being made by Delphi or Socrates. It was great to see how invested they all were! It also led straight into our next discussion point on who was now winning this argument.
The final argument Delphi tries to justify is that it isn’t fair that Socrates has been forced to die when he didn’t want to. Socrates agrees that this isn’t the choice he wanted but he would rather go along with it than live a life where he was unable to think for himself. By this point, there was a group of children who had changed their minds several times since the start of the lesson. They could see Socrates’ point and felt he was making the right choice. There were quite a few children, however, who confidently claimed that they were on Delphi’s side but they felt like Socrates was winning the debate! This was quite a poignant moment for me as I knew that this meant that they were confident enough in their own thinking that despite seeing that others disagree, they could humbly accept a difference in opinion without subsiding their own. They were thinking for themselves as all philosophers should.
Our discussion could have gone on for hours, perhaps days! They had so many answers, suggestions and examples to back up their ideas. Their thinking was much more structured than it had been right at the very start of these Delphi Philosophy lessons. I think this debate will stick with them for a very long time. It was such a special moment for me to share with my class. As were the final moments of our story. We had a few tears and I felt choked up at one point, but it was truly wonderful to experience this conclusion with them all.
So there we have it! The end of twelve amazing weeks of Delphi Philosophy. It has been absolutely incredible to see the impact of Delphi on my class. From a discussion about a good person right at the very start that didn’t go very far to a massive debate in the very last session, in which the class were listening, questioning, reasoning and challenging each other. Philosophy is a massive part of our classroom now and I am excited to include opportunities in the wider curriculum for us to apply our thinking skills. I really hope that these lesson blogs have inspired you to get into the philosophical world – children and philosophy is a combination not to be missed!
Reading the final part of the story is an emotional experience for teachers and children alike. There’s a real sense that we’ve gone through something special together. The children have made some terrific progress (which we know and can measure from using our assessment tools, though that’s another blog in itself). The impact of this story and the scheme of work is more dramatic than I ever expected it to be, and I know from previous year groups that the story and the skills they have learned stay with them long after the book is closed.
A huge thank you to all the children, to Rosie, to Agnes, to Hollie and everyone who has made these lessons and blogs possible. Thank you too for reading – even when we got overexcited and the blogs got long!
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You can teach your children about the story of Socrates by teaching this enquiry to your class too! Download the ‘Hemlock’ Enquiry Pack by clicking the link below, or to get the full experience, you can download the entire Delphi the Philosopher scheme by clicking here!
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Thanks again for reading!
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