THRASS TWO-DAY CERTIFICATE,
GTG, SOUTH AFRICA, NOV 10-11, 2006

Focus: NAPTOSA

Brilliant – a real bonus at this stage of my career – having taught Letterland for over 20 years!

Excellent. What a dynamic presenter. I have only a few years of teaching left, but I’m as fired up as can be.

A real paradigm shift. Thanks for your wonderful presentation. So much to think about and implement.

Excellent! Energetic! Educational! Mr. Davies, your presentation, workshop and resources are the best. You are educating the world! Keep on doing it and I wish you a blessed future.

Excellent. Very informative, well prepared with a good sense of humour.

Very informative and has given me a new perspective on how to teach phonics and spelling. Presenter very enthusiastic and makes one want to start immediately with it. Glad to learn how to improve spelling especially my own! Can’t wait to start.

Great course. A lot of information in two days. I think it’s a great method of teaching – will be implementing it in 2007.

Absolutely brilliant. Very informative. Really changed my views on phonics. Excellent presenter. Kept my attention for two days. Would be fantastic to be able to have Alan at all our schools.

Really inspiring. The content was interesting – fast moving, challenging, made so much sense. Alan was brilliant – the course went so quickly. I am so inspired. Thanks, it was great!

An extremely interesting course. Being of the “older” generation I found that THRASS will make life so much more sensible from now going forward. I can now think out of the box. A BIG thank you to Alan for a truly remarkable way of teaching THRASS in a fun way.

Very dynamic course, in which I learnt a whole new way in teaching sounds to my pupils and my children at home. Thank you for the new ideas and enthusiasm in teaching.

Alan was great. His passion and enthusiasm certainly caused a stir. Found myself regularly nodding in agreement. Excited to put THRASS into practise in New Year.

A very good, well presented course. Am very keen to try it with my learners with special needs.

Quite an eye-opener – I was ready to disregard ‘new’ systems, but was sold on the logic of it by first break on Day 1. I thought it was clearly presented and glad that we had to do as well as listen. Thanks.

The course was wonderful. Very good presentation. Well done Alan. You can be proud of yourself.

This has been very enlightening and very informative. I do feel very bad that the sounds I taught in the past confused some or most learners but now that I know better I am sure I will do better.

Very lively and interesting presentation. Alan obviously has a passion for what he is doing. THRASS can change the world for many teachers and children. After 22 years of teaching – I say thank you! A new challenge to look forward to.

A very dynamic course. Your enthusiasm can only show how successful this approach must be. It is not going to be easy to change the “way of thinking” we have been trained to teach our children. However, am keen to put it into practise. A two day course (very intense) is not nearly enough to allow me to be competent in teaching this approach and fear that perhaps my first class is going to be the guinea pigs! I also feel we will need your support material, charts etc. to be able to put the programme to full use.

Very dynamic speaker which made the course exciting and motivating. I think, although it will take time to implement in our school it has given us many new exciting ideas. Very well presented.

Informative. Links all the theory about phonics already learnt in a multi-sensory way. Alan is incredibly passionate about education!

Thankyou, Alan for sharing this programme – it is very exciting and any school that uses it will certainly help build a more literate South Africa! I feel encouraged. You have tremendous energy. This was time well spent.

Thank you for opening my eyes and mind to English spelling. As an Afrikaans teacher (brought up Afrikaans) I’ve never been taught any of the fancy rules, e.g. fairy “e” and could never comment on English spelling. My name in itself is also a problem for English speaking people as it is apparently an exception to the rule. I do hope/trust THRASS will be the one and only way in the future. Alan – good, energetic presentation and wow .. do you know your stuff! I am a bit overwhelmed by all the information, knowledge and ideas. You have inspired me. I need/feel I need a lot more help, discussions and so on to implement this fully. I trust we will meet again in the future. Thankyou.

I have learned so much. The only way to go! I really believe that all the other phonic programmes were developed to be used as a tool to make things easier for teachers and children – if THRASS is as good as I think it is then you need to celebrate their programmes as a beginning for your programme, not put them down all the time. Thank you for a wonderful new tool to use with my excellent, wonderful, noisy, exciting teachers.

Found it very interesting, especially as I am science based trained and this is a totally new field, and I found it fascinating. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I was never bored and was sorry when it ended.

Wonderful course I personally enjoyed and gained a lot from it. Our children are lucky.

The course was great. I hope you enjoyed your stay in our Country. The resources are brilliant. The old saying “What does not kill you, only makes you stronger”. God bless.

Very interesting course. Thank you! Great presentation.

Vast amount of ‘new’ input over short time. Felt overwhelmed and out of my depth on first day – perhaps because I’m not familiar with basic phonics and sounds. Would have liked to have a practise/hands on with the sounds and ‘boxes’ to check that I do really understand (and be told I’m doing it right). Thank you to Alan, Jean and Marion for the opportunity to expand my knowledge and enable me to pass it on to my child and pupils.

Worth attending. Interesting. Informative. Gives me hope that I would be able to spell correctly in future!

The course was very fruitful and enlightening. It keeps one up to date with the rest of the world instead of being stereotyped and clinging to the old confusing methods. Ms. Place and Mr. Davies, NAPTOSA and everyone involved in this, as an Educator, I would really love to thank you all for the wonderful and important experience I have had. This would really make a difference in my teaching strategy and kids will enjoy the lessons as much as I did. Well done and thank you! God bless u all! Have a wonderful life and safe journeys.

ALAN you rock! Thanks for your great, energetic, and one of the most interesting training courses I’ve been to. It really shows me now, why so many of our children including me were in the dark about our language for years. Keep up the great work.

This was a fruitful course. I’ve learnt a lot. It gave a new definition on how to use letters, ways to give out, to change on my mistake. What to implement at school. To understand letters and their relation, their job. The resources are a handful. This is a brilliant course. I wish it would have been bit longer to get in all details and corner it.

THRASS sounds very interesting, and again it sounds more like the older way of learning, whereby you had to memorise things. The methods used to cram the words on the picture card is easy and fun but memorising where on the board the word is “I am not happy with”. I learnt a lot so far and the lecturer is fantastic and well organised and really knows and understands THRASS. I think it would have been easier if the course was run over three days. Too much information in short time.

I am English speaking (born and bred) but I feel like I’ve learnt a new language. It does make sense! Please convince the G.D.E. that this needs more emphasis in our curriculum. I will help my own kids and learn with them. I enjoyed the new discovery of 20 vowel sounds and the fact that ‘u’ (in queen) is a consonant. You are a brave pioneer.

An informative session. Can be adapted to the South African pronunciation.

It is very helpful to me. I was put in a Remedial class in Grade 2, and for the first time I understand it is not the way I hear the word (sound) but I use the wrong grapheme. Thankyou. I will be using your programme for myself, my little child (who is 4) and my class.

I have now learnt why we are teaching phonemes and I am going to introduce it at my school. Very successful course to attend. I am impressed. Well done! Thank you.

Most interesting. Was kept alive by animated explanations. Appears to be most “ do-able!” Would love to do regular refresher courses to make sure I keep “on-track” until I feel I’ve got it. Keen to get started and try right now.

The course makes a whole lot of sense! Would have liked a bit more time on a separate occasion to become more familiar with the additional resources. Suggestion : spread course over 3 shorter sessions? Have learned a great deal.

Lovely, great, brilliant! Alan is an excellent presenter, BUT! This last bit – I needed far more of that! What a pity! Too much in two days! Information overload.

An exciting and valuable course. Can’t wait to start implementing it in the Classroom. Thankyou.

Wonderful course. Alan was dynamic and interesting and held our attention. I learnt a lot and feel inspired to implement THRASS.

It was a very enlightening and interesting course. It made a lot of sense, and I hope we will be able to implement it in our school. I hope we will be able to have refresher courses from time to time. I think it will make spelling and reading much more fun and will help children to grasp the concepts much quicker. Thank you for a very well presented course.

Very interesting and worthwhile. However, at times I feel that questions asked were not always answered in a clear, understanding to all. Wonderful ideas that could work well.

I have now confidence to teach learners how to spell and read and know that it will be a success. I am very excited about what I have learned. Very well presented. I had lots of fun. I was impressed that Alan could answer all questions asked sensibly.

The course presenter was excellent. His enthusiastic and lively manner was much appreciated. The course is excellent. It is certainly logical and sensible. It has been most valuable to me.

Brilliant course. Made clear presentation on the use of sounds. Great show!

Fantastic! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Can’t wait to implement it in our school. Alan is a super presenter!

It was excellent, well presented and all the hard work that went into “THRASS” was worth every step of the way. Very interesting. Thank you – very much.

Presentation was excellent and the systematic development is in my opinion very valuable to cover all reading and spelling bases. As a speech therapist the emphasis on sound and language interaction is very desirable.

Great, confident presentation to enthuse and amuse (I got that without the rhyming dictionary!) I appreciate the opportunity to have a fresh method offered/learned to help teach our children. You make good sense (most of it anyway … I need to go over some of the notes again!)

Very interesting. Charts – sounds – Great. Love the organisation system. The grouping of sounds. Thanks for practical ideas.

Good information but felt overloaded at times. I hope we implement course as the language and spin-offs will be great.

Very interesting and valuable. Thank you very much.

THRASS course was very interesting and I learnt a lot from it. I could actually step down as a Grade 5 educator and teach Grade 1 so that I could see the transition taking place. This course was very fruitful.

We need more of this in future. It was inspirational and I learnt a lot.

We are so very excited about the THRASS concept and cannot wait to implement it. Alan, you have opened our eyes to a whole new exciting world of teaching. Our school is going to flourish and grow. Thank you could never be enough but now this a true blessing.

Very engaging course. I found it challenging but exciting at the same time. Alan is a passionate speaker who presents his ideas with great enthusiasm. Thankyou.

Learned a lot. Alan Davies seems dynamic, enthusiastic and well-trained. This assists with audience keeping/holding their attention to what he is saying. I truly enjoyed this. Thank you. Can use concepts at school as well as in private practise. Really great.

Lots of thought provoking information. Challenging our paradigms. Exciting, hot, entertaining, valuable. Good for you for challenging the norm!

Wow! What a wonderful experience. Thank you for giving me new inspiration. I can’t wait to start doing THRASS with my young child and will really enjoy working with the children I teach.

Very well presented and informative but now the real work of how to “get started” in the class begins.

The fact that I can spell quite well is an absolute miracle considering our teachers didn’t receive proper training. I can’t wait to play and read with my own pre-school children. Thankyou!

Inspiring and thought provoking. A very enjoyable, informative two days. Many thanks.

Excellent with a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Well presented, excellent aids. Thankyou.

Extremely interesting, informative, intense, sometimes difficult. I don’t have any remedial training/foundation phase background; not the only one. Thank you for sharing your expertise.

As a novice to phonics, I found the course informative and I learned a lot. It makes sense to teach phonemes and graphemes and not one letter = one sound only! Great presenter in Alan Davies – fun and joy. Thank you for a well presented course. I will try to implement THRASS in my one single period of teaching reading skills each week. When will resources be available locally in South Africa?

Fantastic, I’m looking forward to using this in class.

Great presentation! Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening. Wish our whole department could attend. So valuable for teaching correct enunciation – a huge gap we have in our system. Am excited to start.

Alan has done a good job. He is very energetic and explains thoroughly. I really understand how phonics works. I took for granted that it was easy but I can see it needs dedication. One must have a goal and think about what phonics does in our daily vocabulary and those of the young ones (children). Alan is fantastic and had got a sense of humour. Thanks for the program in South Africa

A very interesting, informative two days. Alan imparted the knowledge to us in a way that kept us motivated and excited about THRASS! Very keen to have it implemented at our school. Excellent Alan!

Very well presented. Content makes a lot of sense. Thankyou.

Loved it! Very interesting and challenging. Alan read his audience very well and explained the course material clearly and quickly. The material provided (and used to demonstrate) is appropriate and very helpful. THRASS is extremely well thought out – I’m very impressed. Thank you for your hard work. Looking forward to rapping it with my kids. God bless!

Mr Alan Davies, thank you very much. Your two days course has equipped me with more phonic skills, confidence and a perfect pronunciation. Hoping to see you soon in the near future.

Thank you! I thoroughly enjoyed the course. Most interesting and educational. Will certainly use the material where I can in my teaching (limited as I’m a music teacher) but also with my own children. I can’t wait to access the songs to teach the kids at school.

Please run course over more days. Too much information – too little time to absorb. Course excellent, energetic. Try more practical approach, e.g. group work in analysing etc. More hands-on techniques. I really enjoyed it.

An informative, well presented course. Gave me a new perspective with which to look at teaching of handwriting, reading and spelling.

Very well presented course. Relevant information provided. Resources informative. Thank you for the information shared.

Thank you for the resources. Information overload. The course should be run over a few more days. Valuable information which I look forward to implementing in my reading lessons.

Excellent! You've just confirmed in what I was doing “silently” in my class, but I had to follow school policy – languages. Teaching for nearly 30 years, and doing this within two days opened a new world, lots of motivation and spirit to start 2007. God bless!

Very interesting. I have enjoyed every moment of it and I will be able to implement it in the classroom.

Very interesting, but I think it should be spread over more days. I am excited to start this with my pre-school grandchildren.

It was too long for just two days to take in all of that information. The course was very enlightening and interesting.

A fantastic well presented course. All makes very good sense and hope our school will embrace it. I will. Alan – a most dynamic and enthusiastic person. Well done and Thanks!

The course was very interesting, exciting and motivating. I left feeling inspired and I can’t wait to implement it. Alan was very dynamic and passionate about THRASS. (It was very refreshing).

I enjoyed the course as the presenter was dynamic and interesting. His enthusiasm and excitement about the course was inspiring and infectious. A lot of material was covered over the two days and I’m leaving with a load of information and course material. I feel inspired to do this with my children as I feel very positive that the teaching and spelling level of the children can only improve. Thank you for a valuable course.

Most informative. Dynamic speaker which made it easy to grasp what THRASS is about. I think it is a fantastic course to introduce and teach phonics to both pre-schoolers and primary school children alike.

The course was very educational and helpful. I really enjoyed the course.

This was a hugely informative course. Which I thoroughly enjoyed. I cannot wait to implement this programme in our school. Alan Davies was interesting, dynamic and easy to follow. I thought he was fantastic with his positive approach to teaching children.

Wow, totally blown away. An excellent presenter who was able to keep ones attention for two days. I will definitely implement it with my own children, even if we do not as a “full” school. A system that is user-friendly, dynamic and is able to be implemented across the curriculum.

Fantastic ideas and materials and teaching aids – really useful and helpful. A lot of information for two days. Well done and thank you. Really loved it!

Fantastic and very helpful. Thankyou. A well thought out program!

Thank you! Valuable entertainment. Valuable knowledge. Valuable time and well spent.

Enlightening and uplifting. Thank you. It was great to learn about the system and how it works. Looking forward to trying it out.

This was an absolutely fantastic course that was very useful and an insight. I have gained valuable information which I will be using in my classroom. I do feel, however, that this was a lot of information to take in over two days and think it would be better if run over three mornings. Alan is an excellent presenter, very entertaining.

The course was extremely informative and inspiring.

Thank you Alan – a wonderful and inspiring course, at last I can help myself and many of my learners spell better and with confidence. I am going to use your techniques to get my Grade 7’s going, without them knowing they’re learning. 10/10 to our teacher!

Course was great!

Fantastic! I really enjoyed and learnt lots. You were dynamic and good. Thanks.

Very useful. I’m most enthusiastic to start it in the classroom. It was a lot of course material for two days – a lot to assimilate. Alan was fantastic – a pity the heat made us rather lethargic. Very worthwhile.

Excellent course. This course should be done in three days rather than two days. 10/10.

Very interesting and informative. Love the idea of the music integration. Am sure my learners are going to love the THRASS approach to spelling and reading!

Very interesting concept – love the music/raps. I think it is a great way to keep children interested. Alan is a great lecturer too. Thanks very much.

Excellent. Will implement next year.

The course was well organised and planned. The resources given will be put to use.

Well presented (your energy and enthusiasm are admirable!) and interesting. However, it was also very intense and I thought there was too much information to take in. I felt a little alienated by all the reference to electronic equipment (computers, SMART Boards) as I work in a context where teachers are very poorly trained and wouldn’t know where to start with this, even if they had access to it.

Very interesting. Mr. Davies very passionate in his teaching. Good sense of humour. Course should be carried over a few more days – information overload! Could use this course with my own child.

Very worthwhile information but was very hard for me to grasp every aspect of this in two days. I will definitely implement and thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. Keep up your good work.

Learnt a lot. I wish it was a little bit longer, especially articulating. I think it was very successful though.

Thank you Alan and Wits! Loved the course. Look forward to seeing you at our school.

Excellent presentation and informative. Can change the life of learners with reading problems forever.

Wonderful. Excellent resources. Most informative. Do come again for the rest of our staff please!

Great! Please come again? Thankyou.

Excellent presentation.

I was so happy to hear all that Alan had to say about sounds. For so many years the teaching of reading and spelling has worried me as I have seen the standard deteriorate, especially since the introduction of Letterland. Alan is a most dynamic and entertaining presenter. A superb course.

What enthusiasm! Great information, resources – a truly enlightening course. It was very full and a lot to take in over two days – BUT the presentation made it very bearable – great!

Very enjoyable – thank you. Lovely, lively entertaining presentation – thanks. Will be re-looking and evaluating reading and writing in school. Learned a lot. Good luck for further courses.

Thank you for a course that finally makes sense of phonics. Your passion and enthusiasm have rubbed off and my mind is already ticking over on how to incorporate THRASS into my classroom. You have also helped me identify why certain children in my class (this year) spell the way they do. Thankyou!

Energetic and inspiring. Direct and to the point, no frills.

Excellent and mind-changing! Presented brilliantly – very enjoyable. Very interesting and informative.

An eye-opener and exciting course. Wonderful presentation. The energy levels which Alan had during the two day course, kept us all interested and enthusiastic. Thankyou.

Dynamic way in which course was presented made a big impact. Good to have an alternative to Letterland which was limited. Inspired to go back to school and push school to implement THRASS! – but bit anxious about how to put it into practice with children who have already done Letterland.

Most enjoyable, well presented. Too much information for two days (maybe it’s my age!) Thank you.

The course was very informative. Learnt a lot, made me aware of a new method of teaching. Would be very interested to see the fruit of this course, applied in a school with children with special needs.

I learnt a lot - made me realise that we have not been trained to teach children proper pronunciation.

Very informative. I’ve learnt a lot. I’ve been given many ideas and am rearing to go. Thanks very much. Well worthwhile. I benefited from all the practical demonstrations. Good work and well done.

Not 100% S. African, e.g. rocket = rockat, garden = gardan, so not sure of the difference between these two but will definitely make use of your method with individual pupils. Thanks for a fun-filled day.

An interesting way of introducing sounds/spelling to learners. Make learners in foundation phase level aware of the different “graphs” consonants and vowels. Thank you.

Very dynamic, interesting. I have learnt a lot. Thank you.

Thank you for valuable and enjoyable information. I have learned so much that I feel overwhelmed and excited at the same time. Keep up your wonderful work.

Very enlightening. Will still be very difficult to go back to school and plan though.

An eye-opener. Looking forward to implementing these new ideas!

A wonderful system for teaching handwriting, reading and spelling skills! It’s great fun too! God bless!

Thanks! Informative.

Thank you for all the effort you put in to share it with us. God blessings.

I was blown away! I learned as much but was also affirmed in what I had intuitively suspected over the years. It was really two days well spent.

A really dynamic presenter. I really enjoyed the humour and interactiveness of the course. I appreciated the breaks and the lovely food. I found the course very interesting and the content made complete sense. I am looking forward to trying it out to see how it works. Thank you for your time.

Informative and very helpful. Thank you for sharing your expertise with me. I know and am confident that I have become a better teacher.

The course was very good and I think it will help our children in South Africa to have confidence in reading and spelling, since spelling and reading has been a big problem. It will also help us as teachers.

Excellent. GDE needs to adopt this programme as policy. It should not be selective. Share and celebrate what we know. This programme works. It was most enlightening and really very informative.

Alan was fantastic. What an amazing experience. Alan communicates with his audience with an incredible insight to our moods and needs. I could listen to him all day.

Alan is an extremely dynamic presenter who shows enthusiasm and gives his information as such (contagious). The course is fantastic and should be used in every school in the world!

A brilliant course. I now feel more confident to teach spelling and reading effectively.

Course very informative, needs more time but I’m very positive about it. Can’t wait to implement it. Thank you for everything and we really appreciate your coming to South Africa.

Excellent. Good presentation with stunning resources. Mr. Davies your class performance – you kept me on my toes. It was a wonderful course. Thankyou. God Bless.

Alan, you are amazing and deserve a medal for introducing this course. Thanks for running it with enthusiasm. After being in the classroom for over 30 years, I am excited to change my old ways and try something new. God bless you as you go forward to spread this wonderful system.

Wonderful, changed my approach to reading and spelling/phonics. Dying to share. Excited about implementing it. Try it with my own child. Thanks – GREAT.

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