Touchstones
Written by highly experienced and well-known English teacher Clare Madden, Touchstones is the most comprehensive and dynamic English package on the market
Edco’s bestselling Touchstones for Junior Cycle English returns in a fully revised Second Edition, offering the most comprehensive and dynamic English package on the market.
Expertly written by renowned English teacher Clare Madden, New Touchstones 1 (2nd Edition) has been redesigned to inspire and support First Year students from day one.
This exciting new edition includes:
• A Student Textbook
• A Student Activity Book
• A Free Student e-Book
• A Teacher’s Resource Book
• Free Digital Resources
Student Textbook
- All 22 First Year Learning Outcomes are covered with emphasis on the three strands of the specification: oral language, reading and writing
- Clear, simple design to help students focus and prevent cognitive overload
- Fresh, exciting and engaging text extracts, both traditional and contemporary, updated and used throughout; flash fiction, two novels, a film and diary entries now included in fiction, film and non-fiction units
- Units on fiction, poetry, film, drama and non-fiction carefully structured around the recommended genre-based approach
- NEW studied text sections covering two possible novels (Private Peaceful and The Giver) and a film (Young Woman and the Sea) which include a wide variety of reading, writing, communication and performance tasks
- NEW ‘Drop into…’ sections allow students to dive into text extracts sooner
- Units are designed to be either covered in sequence or dipped into and out, for ease of use
- Units begin with a knowledge organiser of critical vocabulary and end with a Test Your Knowledge section
- A stand-alone Shakespeare unit, with a focus on the world of Shakespeare and Shakespearean grammar and punctuation
Highly scaffolded tasks effectively support mixed-ability classes
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
NEW Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) sections integrated within each unit
Engaging end-of-unit projects
- Can be used to prepare for the Classroom-Based Assessments (CBAs)
- Oral language and writing projects provide students with opportunities to develop a personal writing voice and to experiment with and enjoy elements of public speaking and performance
- Clear success criteria are provided
Step-by-step instructions and tasks with complementary teacher mark sheet and whole class feedback sheet for each project, provided in the Teacher’s Resource Book
Student Activity Book
New Touchstones 1 Student Activity Book provides additional material, questions and activities to complement textbook content, including:
- Meaningful scaffolding to approach written tasks
- NEW Literacy Boost sections, providing simplified versions of text extracts with differentiated activities to effectively teach mixed-ability classes
- Carefully designed graphic organisers to support thinking and writing
- A range of retrieval practice templates to support students using effective learning techniques
New Touchstones 1 Teacher’s Resource Book provides all the practical support you need to teach the course, including:
Planning supports:
• A comprehensive guide to planning
• Detailed, step-by-step unit plans which match each activity with a learning outcome
• Three different types of planning to navigate the programme with ease: genre based, learning in focus and a mixture of both
• Subject department plans
Assessment supports:
• A variety of retrieval practice resources and activity ideas
• Teacher mark sheets and whole-class feedback sheets for projects
• Mini-assessments for each unit
NEW First Year Poetry supports:
• Revision notes for poems, including key quotes, language features and themes for each poem
First Year novel supports:
• Knowledge organisers for selected novels
• Generic character map and plot road organisers, personal response discussion and short writing tasks
Additional supports:
• Blank templates are also provided for use with teachers’ own choice of texts
• Solutions for a wide range of questions
Digital Resources
Teachers and students can access the New Touchstones 1 interactive e-book at www.edcolearning.ie, plus a bank of free digital resources, including:
- Editable PowerPoint presentations for each unit and for studied poems
- Editable units of learning and templates to support planning
- A wide range of videos
- Audio tracks available online
