|
Applewood makes history with
reading and spelling programme
District Mail, 5 May 2006
APPLEWOOD Prep School in Grabouw is
the first school in the Western Cape to implement a cutting-edge
teaching programme that is being used around the world including in
Europe and the US, and learners at the school are reaping the
benefits already. The THRASS (Teaching Reading, Handwriting and
Spelling Skills) programme is said to be advanced methodology
supported by a comprehensive range of multi-sensory resources. The
basis of the philosophy was conceived by Alan Davies, a chartered
educational psychologist and former trainer and teacher in the UK.
Denyse Ritchie joined him in 1995 to develop the courses and
resources and since then, THRASS courses have been launched in
Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South America, Central America and
the USA.
Applewood Prep School recenty hosted a workshop for principals and
teachers from schools across the Helderberg with THRASS trainer
Laola Altschul, who also visited other Peninsula schools.
THRASS has recently been made a compulsory module for B. Ed and B.
Prim Ed students at one of South Africa's leading universities and
is currently being considered at three others.
Alan told DistrictMail he developed the programme to help learners
develop appropriate phonic (letter-sound) knowledge, for which
teachers must have accurate knowledge of these relationships. "Too
frequently learners are given misleading information which clearly
does not assist their learning and often creates confusion. For
example, teachers sometimes teach that the letter 'a' is pronounced
/a/ (as in "cat"); but the letter "a" can represent a number of
different sounds.
At the end of the training, Alan says teachers should be able to:
"accurately articulate, identify, read and spell the 24 consonant
phonemes; the seven short monophthongs; the five long monophthongs;
the eight diphthongs; blend phonemes for reading (beyond 'initial
letter sounds') and segment words into phonemes for spelling (beyond
'initial letter sounds').
The units of the THRASS programme are the 44 phonemes (speech
sounds) and the 120 keygraphemes (spelling choices) of English - not
the artificial and restrictive "letter sounds" of "Old Phonics"
programmes. Teachers are able to make natural links between the 44
phonemes and their graphemes by drawing attention to words found in
the environment, such as the names of people, places and products.
"The programme does not depend on learners having to ignore the
misleading advice that, when reading, each lower-case letter has a
specific sound and, when spelling, each sound has a specific
lower-case letter - along with having to ignore any associated
physical actions, alliterative characters (such as 'Alan Ant' or 'Denyse
Duck') and/or explanations (such as letters being "silent", "magic",
"soft", or 'irregular'). There is no need for any 'Changeover
Teaching'," says Alan.
According to him, speaking and listening skills, sequential skills,
word synthesis skills and word analysis skills are taught by
continual reference to pictures, letters, keywords, phoneme-boxes
and/or keygraphemes displayed on class and/or individual
whole-picture charts.
All of the sub-stage and stage outcomes are assessed by
criterion-referenced tests (tests with observable standards of
achievement). The programme teaches life-long word solving skills
and can be taught to learners of all ages and abilities.
Gareth Allman, headmaster at Applewood Prep School, says the easiest
way to explain the need for this programme in all schools, is: "If
you have the choice to create a document on a typewriter or to use
new technology and to create the document in Microsoft Word, which
would you choose? There is nothing wrong with the old phonic reading
programmes, but over the last 20 or 30 years, so much neurological
studies and how to apply this research to teaching, has been done.
New methodologies have been developed and that is why I decided to
implement the system."
Gareth says THRASS is child and teacher-friendly, appeals to all
aspects of the learners' life and the resources are designed with
the child in mind - incorporating music and the latest technology.
It also makes life much easier for the teacher.
"It allowed us to ensure a consistent approach to reading and
spelling for all grades, across all the learning areas as reading
and spelling is everyone's responsibility, not just the English
teacher."
Gareth says the resources can also be used at schools without the
interactive whiteboards and computer rooms, because the basic
resources can still be implemented.
"Giving a child the skills of reading and writing, empowers them for
life. This programme enables teachers to teach the science of
English correctly from the beginning."
Right Click
on the hyperlink. Select Save Target As. Specify where you
would like to store the file on your hard drive.
DOWNLOAD
PDF 32KB
Portable Document Format
 |
