Touchstones Volume B (Touchstones (Student's Guides Touchstones Discussion Project))

By Geoffrey Comber

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878461516
• ISBN13: 9781878461513
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Touchstones Discussion Project
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 11 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 6 to 8

Customer Reviews

Excellent Resource for Conducting Socratic Seminar and Class Discussions

This version was published in 2002. It is meant as a student text for use in conducting class discussions using socratic seminar methods. The Introduction explains the learning goals of the program, the skills developed, the role of the student and teacher, and how the classroom is organized in conducting the sessions. Chapter 1 is devoted to the Orientation Class, where students are introduced to the ground rules and goals. Each of the following 29 chapters consists of a brief reading from one to three pages in length. The students begin by reading the passage and then engage in class discussion with the teacher facilitating to keep the focus on student interaction with each other, in response to interpretation of the text. The texts are chosen to stimulate exploration of ideas and enriched understandings, rather than to debate opposing points of view. The excerpts in the text include: The Odyssey (Homer), On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings (William James), Why There Are Children (Tale from Madagascar), Africa), Pensees (Blaise Pascal), Stride Toward Freedom (Martin Luther King), On War (Karl von Clausewitz), On Persuasion (The Book of Han Tei Tzu), Can Lying Be Justified (A Case Study in Medical Ethics), Boy Viewing Mount Fuji and Photograph of Mount Fuji (Katsushika Hokusai), The Lives of Greeks and Romans (Plutarch), Society in America (Harriet Martineau), Fire and Ice (Robert Frost), The Confessions (Saint Augustine), On National Education (Mary Wollstonecraft), The Autobiography (Charles Darwin), On the Nature of Things (Lucretius), Gorgias (Plato), Letter to Her Mother (George Sand), The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Discourse on Method (Rene Descartes), On Arguments (ChuangTzu), On Laziness (Montaigne), Sloth (Pieter Bruegel), The Way of Righteousness (Buddha), The Stonecutter (Japanese Tale), and The Most Frugal Man in the World (Chinese Tale)