touchstones 2

Touchstones 2 - Textbook and Activity Book Set

Written by highly experienced and well-known English teacher Clare Madden, Touchstones presents a fresh and engaging new approach to Junior Cycle English.

Touchstones uses cutting-edge, classroom-tested methods to build up students’ knowledge of texts and skills in a carefully integrated way. Students are led on an innovative and exciting journey through the specification.

The Touchstones package includes:

• A Student Textbook
• A Student Activity Book
• A Free Student e-book
• Free Audio App

• All 22 First Year Learning Outcomes are covered with emphasis on the three strands of the Junior Cycle English specification: oral language, reading and writing
• The clear, simple design helps to focus students and prevent cognitive overload
• Fresh, exciting and engaging text extracts, both traditional and contemporary, are used throughout from novels, plays, films, digital texts and multi-modal texts
• Units are carefully structured around the recommended genre-based approach and cover the following genres: fiction, poetry, film, drama, Shakespeare and non-fiction
• These sequenced units of learning begin by building a strong knowledge base for each genre, develop oral communication, reading and writing skills, and end with a project
• They are designed to be either covered in sequence or to be dipped into and out, for ease of use
• A stand-alone Shakespeare unit, a first with this programme, introduces students to the world of Shakespeare and builds knowledge and understanding of the grammar and punctuation of a Shakespearean text
• Each unit begins with a knowledge organiser of genre-based critical vocabulary and ends with a Test Your Knowledge quiz
• Highly scaffolded tasks effectively support mixed-ability teaching in the English classroom
• Retrieval practice opportunities that build on prior learning appear throughout
• Oral language supports include a strong focus on using structured and meaningful group discussion

Reading supports include:

• Effective reading strategies integrated into tasks to develop reading skills
• A dedicated reading unit including over 40 books appealing to this age group as well as engaging group tasks to encourage and promote reading for pleasure

Writing supports include:

• Scaffolded writing tasks (models and writer’s toolkits) that promote the craft of writing
• A skills development approach for writing to analyse, beginning in first year with annotation, quotation and inference skills
• A focus on development of high-level vocabulary throughout
• A dedicated Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) section at the
  end of the book