A Socratic Seminar during a 45-minute period

I'm struggling with the 45-minutes class period, which is new this year.

I thought 50 minutes was short, and struggled with it. But 45 minutes? Crazy short.

A typical class with my seniors is this: I will give them a passage from what we are reading. They will have 20 minutes to mark it up according to the passage's purpose and the author's techniques. (This replicates the 20 minutes of preparation they will get for the IB Oral Commentary). Then, they will have 15 minutes to discuss the passage in a graded Socratic Seminar. Then, there will be 10 minutes of feedback from the outer circle.

However, the discussion doesn't usually get good until about Minute #12, so I usually cut it off when it's going well. And it the timing is as good as I can make it, but doesn't account for moving seats, explaining any new instructions, assigning roles in the outer circle, etc. Today, we got 4 minutes of feedback and I totally didn't feel like we got into the meat of the discussion. I could get this discussion done last year. If I had 90 minutes, I'd really be able to dig deep.

I'm thinking of having the students prepare their passage at home the night before, but that takes away some of the pressure. We'll see how I can improve.