On course for inspiration
Career development; Interview;
Pat King; Alan Houston
03 April 1998
Helen Horne talks to two teachers about their best
in-service training experiences.
An exotic mixture of metaphors tumbles out as Pat King
enthuses about the course that has transformed her thinking
about teaching. "I have no need of bandwagons nor do I
have an empire to build, but THRASS is like the road to
Damascus." It stands for Teaching of Handwriting, Reading
and Spelling Skills, and for three days, Pat - head of
learning support and special needs co-ordinator at Trinity
School, a grant-maintained secondary in Carlisle - listened to
Alan Davies explain his theories at Lacey Green primary school
in Wilmslow, Cheshire.
Using techniques familiar to speech therapists, the course
provides a framework for teaching reading and spelling. And it
answers an urgent need, says Pat. "Teachers are not
negligent or bloody-minded, but we seem to have been failing
at this basic level of reading and spelling. A lot of pupils
enter secondary schools with a reading age of six, and a lot
of very bright pupils still have severe spelling problems when
they leave."
She now believes THRASS
provides the answer with its framework of speech sounds and
spelling choices that help children to read and spell. "I
am too long in the tooth for many of the new initiatives, but
this has really fired me. It pulls together best practice. As
a technique it has potential to be used throughout the school,
across the curriculum, so that all teachers could take
responsibility for literacy in their subject."…..
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