THRASS TWO-DAY CERTIFICATE,
HAMPSHIRE, SEPT 28-29, 2006

Super course. Will be organising other teachers to attend so we can implement within our school.

Really enjoyable. I believe that THRASS will help the children I work with to develop their literacy skills and become more confident learners. I look forward to using THRASS on Monday! Thank you Hilary.

Excellent course which is practical yet informative for teachers subject knowledge in phonics. I will be returning to school and will be implementing this throughout the primary age range.

An excellent course, presented with enthusiasm and belief. Particularly useful to watch Hilary modelling how she would interact with the children in school in demonstrating the different activities. I only wish that I could purchase the class and individual charts at the course so that I could start on Monday!

Thoroughly enjoyed it. The pieces are all falling into place and I feel much more confident about using it with my class. A very well delivered, informative course. Many thanks.

Enjoyed the course. Examples of games and activities for each level (older and younger classes) very useful. Like the fact you relate and model levels to how you would use it with children.

I found the course very helpful, as we have already started THRASS at our school. Much easier to be told how to do it, rather than read it! Very enjoyable.

Lots of good ideas to do with young children within playgroup. A good way to introduce children to sounds that letters or groups of letters make. Playgroup children from as young as two years 9 months enjoy the rap and dancing to it!

I think this is a good system and will work well in early reading skills.

A very useful system. I can see how it is going to help the children.

I really enjoyed this course. There are some things that I am going to try straight away, e.g. getting my spelling group to sound words and then say letter names as they write. Going to feed back to SENCO.

An enjoyable lively course. As I teach years 3-11, I would have liked more time on the later part of the programme. The resources are great – they will be very useful. I will have to study the resources carefully and work through them with the children to make sure I know what I am doing. I’ve learnt a lot and will enjoy using this new approach.

Very interesting course. This would make a good whole school phonics programme within my setting. I plan to ‘cascade’ this to the rest of the staff at a staff meeting. I hope I can do the programme justice. We may, if all goes well, trial with within FS and KS1 to begin with. However, I would like to have some of our older SEN children helping my little ones with the raps – both groups would benefit.

I enjoyed the course and believe it will be very useful. I hope to use it in the whole of Year 3 initially and in groups in other year groups. Pace of teaching and quality of materials was good. Particularly enjoyed bits including raps and games which could perhaps have been used a little more.

Very intensive – but covering such a lot. Very informative – use of resources. Giving confidence to start the scheme. Giving enthusiasm – to be able to help younger children – and to enjoy learning to spell.

Very good to have an enthusiastic trainer who had super subject knowledge in both the theory and how to teach it. I would have enjoyed it more if there was more chance for discussing with others and activities to break up the sessions.

Good ideas; “if you can’t say the word properly how are you going to spell it”. Very good advice.

The course had made clearer, things about THRASS that I was unsure about, thus making me more confident to deliver it to the children. I really enjoyed the two days course.

Presentation well prepared and resourced. Would have liked more active participation and a visual demo. of work with children (time permitting). A lot to take on board but very thoroughly researched.

I really enjoyed the course and have learnt a lot. I will go back to school and feed back to the staff. We will have to decide as a whole school if we will use the THRASS programme.

Very interesting two day course. Food for thought. Clearly and enthusiastically presented. Material here for a staff meeting or two .. to discuss how best to use THRASS in our mixed age range classes.

The course was very useful and provided plenty of ideas for games. The free resources were great and Hilary was very helpful. Some of the games and activities went on for longer than was necessary. Some examples also went on for too long. Overall, the course was excellent.

Really good course. Very informative. Lots of new ideas to try. Could have been spread out over 3 days, an awful lot to take in on Day 2.

I found the course very useful. I will definitely use the charts with my SEN spelling group. The variety of approaches will hopefully target the learning styles of all the children, whilst holding their interest.

Have now got a good idea how to use the system and at what level to start and how to progress the children. Previously had only looked at the teaching guide and charts and found it different to decipher.

Very helpful in explaining how THRASS can be used and worked through. Excellent resources, though would have liked to see demo of THRASS-IT. Have started using THRASS for one year – now am 100% confident in how it integrates – certainly needed the course. Many thanks – intend to ‘spread the word’.

Attended only one day. I am working with Y5-6 children. Some elements of programme will be useful.

Good, interesting course. Enthusiastic facilitator. Many useful aspects which can be incorporated into our current phonics teaching. Will be expensive to launch the scheme across the whole school!

Very interesting points! Nice to know were doing it right. Some good ideas to enhance our teaching. Still can’t get my mind round the /er/ box e.g. er, ar, or, ure, a, e, I, o, u – must be my accent!

Enjoyed the course. I learnt a lot about phonics myself and see ways to use this in the class. The decision to use THRASS would be a whole school decision but I feel it is something I would like to present at a staff meeting. I teach Reception and now see a way to address the problems I come across every year where children need to spell words like – my, the, like, was and have no strategy to do so.

The course thoroughly explained how to use all THRASS resources, especially the THRASS Picturechart. I found the information about the English language and it’s linguistics very useful and will be able to feed back to staff the methodology of 44 sounds of English. As a Reception teacher I am unsure of the way THRASS fits into guidelines regarding the NLS and the Foundation Stage Curriculum in that I need to teach them how to link sounds to letters very quickly and THRASS places higher importance on letter names and location on the chart of pictures and your key words.

Clear and informative. Will help me set up SEN programmes.

I found the reasons and methodology behind THRASS very good because I can see the sense in exposing children from an early age to all the 44 sounds. Also, that words should be printed as this is how children will see them. However, I felt I couldn’t see how the system would be used to teach young children to read. I felt it was more for teaching older children to spell. I can’t see how it fits in with the key words children need to learn according to the NLS, in order to be able to read.

A very good course! Having bought it for pre-school and KS1 we needed to see how we can change our Dyslexia Institute structured programme to make it a whole-school programme and hopefully introduce it in KS2, although we will use it with LS pupils in KS2. A super setting, we were well looked after and an excellent presentation!

Enjoyed the delivery. However, still not entirely sure of the benefits to the whole of KS1. I can see how it could improve spelling in Year 2 and aid KS2 greatly.

Excellent delivery and program. As well as the charts being put up (so as to write on them etc.) it would be really good to have them enlarged so as to see properly otherwise it takes much longer to learn. I have also been trained on the “Read, Write, Inc” program and I think the finger-spelling involved in this gives an added dimension which is very valuable. Many thanks!

I enjoyed this very much.

A useful course, it gave a good overview of how to use the scheme and lots of background information. Parts of the days could have been more pacey especially examples of the games which sometimes took a little long, making the end of the two days a little rushed. Sometimes it felt like we were not being credited with being experienced teachers and some explanations were not needed.

Found this really interesting and can really see the benefit (as a whole – pre-school, YR, KS1). THRASS would make a good foundation.

As a teaching assistant I found the course very useful, giving all sorts of ideas for various aspects of my job, not just THRASS teaching but also speech and language, and precision teaching. I thought the course could have been condensed as we are professionals and did not need to be taught phonics sounds or spend so long playing some of the games.

A very useful course. I feel quite excited at trying this with my class and also feeding back to my colleagues. Excellent materials.

The course put into context things I have been teaching since the introduction of the NLS but without much confidence! It is a very different approach to learning language to the way I was taught but somehow much more logical! Hilary, I admired your energy and your clear presentation. I learnt so much and realised there is a lot I need to learn.

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