Early Touchstones stages focus primarily on group dynamics and what is required to achieve full participation, which includes listening as much as it includes speaking. Issues such as power, certainty, respect, and control are topics with which all participants have direct experience and about which they have opinions. Texts with those issues support higher levels of student participation and feature prominently in the early lesson plans in our volumes. Over time, the class evolves to advanced questioning, reasoning, and problem solving. As their discussion skills improve and broaden, students connect more meaningfully and authentically with the texts. They learn to read closely as part of their work in active listening—becoming mindful of the ways in which their own thinking is and is not similar to the viewpoints expressed in the text or by their peers.
Ultimately, students are applying all the skills they’ve acquired in Touchstones to participate in and lead a fully inclusive and collaborative discussion. In such classes, thinking synthesizes individual perspectives to build new knowledge and understanding. This is as true for students in grade three as it is for adults in the later stages of their lives.