All Touchstones program progress through four stages of a developmental continuum. Although each stage describes and addresses a specific set of abilities and challenges associated with inclusive dialogue and collaboration, the skills learned and practiced at each stage work in tandem with skills learned in other stages. Each of these respective skills are necessary for effective, inclusive, and constructive discussions.
At all times during a class’ development, the Touchstones discussion teacher is considering the particular barriers her or his students face and the strengths and talents they bring to address those barriers. Focusing students’ efforts toward the development of skills that overcome those obstacles help them—and you as their teacher—to achieve respectful and cooperative exchanges of ideas and increasingly more complex thinking and self-governance.
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.
Goal: Students begin to speak to one another and not only to or through the teacher.
In this stage, Touchstones lessons focus the discussion leader’s efforts on establishing a class in which each participant feels he or she can speak safely to and learn from peers. Work done in this stage sets the groundwork for authentic exchanges of ideas and questions in an inclusive group.
Goal: Each student has a voice and opinions that have a place in the discussion class, regardless of that student’s academic performance or background.
Touchstones lessons in this stage guide the teacher to create a class in which all students are able to work together cooperatively and respectfully. Each student must feel comfortable being a speaker whose perspective is valued by the group.
During the first two stages of a Touchstones program, students work just as much on understanding and improving the dynamics of the discussion process as they do on exploring and understanding the text.
Goal: Students examine their own assumptions and presuppositions to more accurately understand other points of view—both those of the author and of their peers.
Touchstones lessons in this stage help the teacher to use complex texts as tools for building student’s close reading and active listening skills. Just as close reading requires more than mere seeing words on a page, listening is a complex activity requiring much more than our sense of hearing. Active listening occurs when a person actively strives to understand another speaker’s or author’s intended meaning. In this stage, students move beyond reading or hearing things as corollaries or extensions of their own thinking. They begin to recognize diverse viewpoints as distinct from their own and worthy of examination.
Goal: All students function as participants and leaders.
In the final stage of development in Touchstones programs, the lessons provide focus and practice in shared leadership. This is achieved when each member of the group acts with a shared sense of responsibility for the success of the discussion. When a group achieves shared leadership, it is often difficult to distinguish the leader from the participants.
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