In order to help schools select a high quality phonics
programme, the British Government has just published its
criteria for a good programme and THRASS synthetic phonics
scores full marks against all those criteria.
On 7
September Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson,
announced measures to further improve numeracy and literacy
standards in primary schools across England. As part of
this, teachers will be given new guidance to make phonics
their prime approach to early reading in the renewed
‘Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics’, which will
incorporate the recommendations of the Rose Review of the
Teaching of Early Reading that ‘high quality phonic work’ is
the best means for teaching beginner readers how to read and
spell.
The
criteria for a good phonics programme will be set out in
Annex A to the
renewed Framework and THRASS synthetic phonics meets
every single one:
-
THRASS is fully compatible with a broad and rich
curriculum and can easily be integrated into a whole
range of subjects across the curriculum so that children
learn much more quickly.
-
THRASS is systematic, with a clearly defined and
structured progression for learning all the major
grapheme-phoneme correspondences through its 10
‘Features’, four ‘Phases’ and 10 ‘Stages’.
-
THRASS is designed to be delivered in discrete daily
sessions at a brisk pace well matched to children's
developing abilities. By following the scheme of work
set out in the latest THRASS publication, ‘THRASS 15
Minutes a Day x 2’,
which is based on the essential teaching guide ‘TEACHING
THRASS’, all the material required to fully implement
and assess the 10 stages of the THRASS programme will be
covered in four years. However, this scheme of work has
also been designed to offer maximum flexibility and can
easily be adapted to suit the actual number of
weeks/terms in any school year.
-
THRASS is underpinned by a synthetic approach to
blending phonemes in order all through a word to read
it, and segmenting words into their constituent phonemes
to spell them.
-
THRASS makes clear that blending and segmenting are
reversible processes.
-
THRASS is a multi-sensory programme based on developing
visual, auditory and kinesthetic skills in learners and
‘Teaching THRASS’ explains how all the THRASS
multi-sensory resources (audio, magnetic, printed,
software and video) are used, with children encouraged
to participate in miming, story-telling, drama,
speaking, listening, handwriting, singing and dancing.
-
THRASS makes clear the importance of speaking and
listening as the foundation for embarking on a
systematic phonics programme and for acquiring the
skills of reading and writing.
-
THRASS offers clear guidance on how to assess progress
and use this to inform the next steps of learning.
-
THRASS is
widely used internationally for teaching
learners of all ages and abilities but
has been particularly successful for teaching children
with special educational needs. The ‘THRASS Phoneme
Machine’, a groundbreaking computer programme that uses
the International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation system
and moving human lips to demonstrate the pronunciation
of hundreds of words frequently found in children's
reading books, is particularly suited to teaching those
with speech or hearing difficulties or dyslexia.
However, a serious omission from the published criteria is
that lower case and capital letters should be identified by
name. THRASS delivers an additional benefit in that by
naming letters, it is able to introduce capital letters from
the earliest stages of learning.
But
the THRASS synthetic phonics programme also offers much
more. It provides an
extensive
picture-based training website for schools and parents (www.thrass.co.uk)
with easy access to a wide range of resources and support
materials and extensive evidence of the widespread success
of THRASS. Teachers,
parents, educational psychologists and speech and language
therapists in thousands of schools in the UK, Europe and
Africa
use THRASS and the website includes a number of
demonstration lessons and shows THRASS being used very
successfully in a wide range of schools: the Kwena Basin
Farm schools in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa
where the children live in extremely difficult surroundings
but where everyone has been amazed at their rate of progress
and their unbelievable desire to learn; St Peter’s
Preparatory School in Johannesburg, where within a year
THRASS, combined with paired reading, had, contrary to the
current trend among boys in UK schools, produced some
stunning results with a 60 percent increase in boys’
spelling ages and a considerable increase in their reading
ages; brand new schools like Oxley Park Primary School,
Milton Keynes and also challenging inner city schools like
Windsor Clive Infants School, Cardiff, both of which are
Centres of Excellence for teaching THRASS. More recently,
Sunderland City Council has provided evidence of the impact
of THRASS for teaching primary pupils for whom English is a
second language or who have special educational needs: for
every week on the programme, the pupils made nearly six
weeks improvement in reading.
In
order to help them implement the new guidance in the renewed
‘Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics’, every
primary school in England is being given additional funding
to support up to 14 days training. THRASS UK runs highly
acclaimed accredited training courses for teachers,
assistants and parents in the UK, Europe, West and Southern
Africa. Hundreds of courses have now been run and thousands
of extremely positive evaluations received. All the details
can be seen at
www.thrass.co.uk/courses.htm.
And
there are reports of still more plans for the large-scale
introduction of THRASS. In Mauritius discussions are
currently taking place about the implementation of THRASS in
a number of government and private primary schools from
January 2007. And in South Africa, the Crawford collection
of schools that constitutes the largest single private
school organisation in South Africa, will all begin
implementing THRASS from January 2007. Alan Davies,
Executive Director of THRASS UK, will be training the first
wave of Crawford teachers in November and the initiative is
expected to have a big impact on the independent sector in
many countries.
In
addition, the Department for Education and Skills is now
looking to determine the criteria for and establish a new
independent QA system to assess commercial phonics
programmes. It has invited THRASS UK to discuss with it the
development and operation of those criteria and THRASS UK is
looking forward to doing so.
Issued by: THRASS UK News Media Centre
www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm
Mike Meade, Media Director, +44 1829 741413 Mob: 07970 151
738
mikemeade@thrass.co.uk
Chris Griffiths, International Development, +30 266 203 1207
chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
