NELSPRUIT - All the English
teachers of Uplands Preparatory School and Southern
Cross School of Hoedspruit spent two days becoming
familiar with THRASS, a methodo-logy for teaching
pupils of any age, about the building blocks of
reading and spelling.
THRASS (Teaching, handwriting, reading and
spelling skills) was developed by Mr Alan Davies, an
educational psychologist and Ms Denyse Ritchie in the United Kingdom. The
workshop facilitator, Ms Laola Altshul of Broadhurst
Primary School in Gaberone, Botswana, is the
principal trainer for the entire continent. The
Broadhurst staff members were the first in Africa to
implement this system in September 2003. Uplands
will be the first to implement it in Mpumalanga and
Southern Cross School will be the forerunners in
Limpopo. According to Altshul, "Implementing it in
schools is a question of making good schools better
by keeping up with advances in the latest
technology."
"Old phonics" are out, now that the THRASS
multisensory resources (audio, magnetic, printed,
software and video) are used to teach the 10-stage
"new phonics" programme. In English one letter (of
the alphabet) does not make one sound as it is not a
phonetic lang-uage. There are 26 letters of the
alphabet whereas there are 44 sounds or phonemes.
From the outset, the programme uses natural
synthesis (based on the natural phonemes and
graphemes of English) rather than the artificial
synthesis (based on artificial letter sounds) to
teach the valuable building blocks of English words
and the thinking processes involved in reading and
writing the five hundred base words of written
English.
The teachers at the workshop thoroughly enjoyed
the "raps and sequences CD" and sang along, pointing
to the various phonemes, graphemes and pictures
while keeping time to the music and rap songs. They
also played language games during the hands-on
course to enable them to use them in the classrooms.
This will definitely become popular with pupils who
will catch on with ease.
It is important to note that to be literate in a
language, one has to be able to speak and write it
according to the demands of society. The THRASS
methodology can be applied to any scheme already in
place and can be started at any level of learning.
It is designed to be cross-curricular and so would
undoubtedly enrich a learner`s vocabulary in every
field or subject. Even in the case of various
English accents, a pupil may choose a different
phoneme, but always make the correct spelling
choice. According to statistics in the UK there has
been a 2,7 month progress in spelling for every
month in the pupils being taught this way. Results
in maths have been noticeably better and there is an
improved ability to analyse and comprehend. Both
headmasters of Uplands and Southern Cross, Messrs
Gavin Sinclair and Jumbo Williams, have concurred
that in their opinion, both schools have made a wise
choice by implementing this advanced methodology.
