 |
Touchstones |
Sinethemba |
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Senior Secondary School |
|
Touchstones |
Sinethemba |
|---|---|---|
|
||
| Senior Secondary School |
|
On February 14, 2003, SAEP launched a pilot Touchstones Discussion Group in its SAEP @ Sinethemba programme. The Touchstones Project was developed at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. The goal of Touchstones is to "encourage cooperative learning as well as to exercise such key individual skills as critical thinking, respect for others, personal responsibility, and self-discipline." SAEP believes it is an ideal learning programme for an organisation devoted to the "greening" of young minds and souls. "The Touchstones Discussion Project fosters the development of certain fundamental learning skills by means of weekly discussions classes: listening actively; cooperating with people of different backgrounds; thinking responsibly in situations of great uncertainty; teaching oneself, and explaining ones ideas. Students learn and practice these skills most effectively in discussion classes. Discussion stresses the responsibility students have for their own learning and for that of their fellow students. In Touchstones, the various strengths that students possess are used to strengthen one another's weaknesses. In a Touchstones class, the teacher becomes a discussion leader who is responsible for facilitating and monitoring actively the interaction between the students and between the students and the text ." SAEP is launching the programme with a small group of its interns in order to learn the Touchstones method and enable the interns to become group leaders for discussion groups in the schools. SAEP's goal is to bring the Touchstones Project to other high schools in Cape Town and to make it an integral part of the model intervention for township high schools that SAEP is developing. SAEP would like to express its gratitude to Howard Zeiderman and Touchstones for his support and encouragement in the launch of Touchstones in South Africa. |
|
CONTACT |