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Organiser: NAPTOSA
Great! A whole new way of
teaching the right way!
What a paradigm shift! Most certainly has changed my thinking. Well presented
and most enjoyable.
10 out of 10 for the most incredible and interesting learning experience.
A very entertaining and motivating course. For once – the English language makes
a bit of sense!
Wonderful. So much became clearer, more obvious, and I am very excited to return
to class!
Everything I believe in when it comes to teaching Phonics! Love the resources.
Fantastic presentation. Can’t wait to get started.
Good fun. Made sense. Made me enthusiastic to get back to school to try it out
on my class.
Fantastic. Very interesting. Looking forward to teaching THRASS.
Wow! I finally understand the English language. Teaching (spelling), phonics,
reading – it makes a lot of sense. This is a fabulous course. I will definitely
recommend this to anyone. Thank you for a lovely time. I look forward to a great
time in sharing my new knowledge with the children.
Thank you very much for a very interesting and educational experience.
Excellent course. I did learn a lot. Thank you for the excellent resources,
information and detail.
Initial misgivings e.g. re-inventing the wheel but – on completion, most
impressed because – relevant to needs of an increasingly literacy-challenged
world (i.e. wheel needs to be re-invented). Multi-sensory approach (akin to
Montessori). Dynamic, intuitive, appealing, accessible, substantial.
Excellent. Can’t wait for Monday.
Great! Thoroughly enjoyable! Can’t wait to implement!
Very good. Thoroughly enjoyable.
As a senior primary qualified teacher, it has been wonderful to get some
grounding (finally!) on how to teach reading, spelling and handwriting, as this
was not part of our course when I studied in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Alan’s THRASS concept makes so much sense and he is both an entertaining and
motivating speaker. I feel so inspired by all this - including for my own
children.
Good, enjoyed a lot. Learnt something of use for the rest of my life. You are
great!
Wonderful, fun-filled course. Very practical/hands-on teaching. Mr. Davies
enchanted us on how to teach this wonderful THRASS system. Thank you for your
wonderful work and ideas that you do!
It’s a great course. Thanks. Wonderful to implement.
Interesting and educational. It was good to get it at the beginning of the year
so that it can be implemented to learners early in the year.
A wonderful learning experience. Can’t wait to implement it on Monday! Well
explained. Would have loved to have seen some more video coverage but will look
on net.
Well done. It’s a lovely course. We will be producing learners with thinking
skills.
Super! I was never introduced to English in this way. It absolutely makes sense!
The kids will love and enjoy THRASS. And I am sure that they will find English
easy.
Well planned. Learners will enjoy these activities. It will be fun for the
learners and teacher.
Wow! What a great course! I am so excited to start with THRASS in my class!
THRASS is going to make my job with spelling much easier!
Very informative in three ways. I can’t wait to get home to share this with my
own child. I feel confident that I will be providing the best education. I am a
very weak speller and went to remedial lessons as a child. If only I’d had
THRASS!
An intensive and informative two days. It has been a real inspiration for me to
go back teaching.
I’ve had a “Wow” experience. I’ve learnt that integration is the key word to my
teaching. Feeling really positive – excited to start! Thanks to Alan and all
supporting staff. Very entertaining!
Very informative and interesting to attend. A lot of things make more sense!
Excellent.
Exciting and valuable. Everything taught were concepts that were starting to
dawn on me over the last two years. This clarifies my emergent thinking. I am
eager to embark on my new journey.
Outstanding! I can’t wait to attend the Sing-A-Long Concert and to use all the
new resources. Very hands-on and interactive. You have revolutionised my
teaching.
A wonderful learning programme that takes into consideration the different
abilities of all learners. Thank you Mr. Davies for making our jobs as educators
easier, motivating and rewarding. I look forward to implementing THRASS in my
class. May you please come and do a demonstration at our school. We would be
honoured to have you!
Well presented. Hope to implement what I have learnt as well and motivated as
presenter. Enjoyed Sing-A-Long – will improve sight word recognition and
reading.
It’s an interesting way to improve Literacy. Well planned approach to teaching
English to learners.
Very informative – now feel more confident and excited to begin program at
school. Would like to attend another course with ideas for working with very
young children.
Great course that will do wonders in all schools.
Excellent. Lively and entertaining. Well organised.
Very good! A very clever concept.
Most entertaining and informative. Wholesome approach to the world of teaching,
writing and loving the English language. Exciting times. Will enjoy this
challenge as the children do.
Alan Davies is an excellent presenter. Well planned and organised. I was very
confused about the programme as I was informed by other members of my staff who
attended the workshop on a previous occasion. Truly, I found it very
embarrassing as I realised I have been teaching ‘old phonics’ manner/way
incorrectly. I am pleased as I now am able to fix/correct my method of teaching
phonics the correct way. This will definitely limit teaching incorrectly and
creating learning difficulties, which I believe I have been doing for the past
decade of teaching. Alan Davies and your team, good work and thanks for sharing
your knowledge with me.
Well done Alan! Good presentation, well-organised and very enthusiastic and
alive spirit. Looking forward to attending another workshop presented by you.
Thank you to all the people who were involved in organising this workshop.
Everything of the best with your future endeavours.
Interesting and informative. I still want to see how it could be applied to help
in the teaching of African languages (Sepedi).
It was incredibly insightful. Alan Davies kept me intrigued and listening to
everything he said! I loved the ideas that were given on the games you could
play and the various techniques one could use to get the learners involved.
Excellent, very engaging. We were actively involved throughout. Perhaps an hour
too long. Very informative, systematic. I’m a first year Grade 3 teacher and
after just two days Alan has fitted the whole chart into my head!
It was a brilliant course. I have learnt so much and am hoping that I will
present it as efficiently as you did. Thank you for the wealth of information
that you shared with me.
Excellent – thank you for a fantastic presentation. Wow! Alan presented this
course with such enthusiasm and energy. He really believed this is the best way
to approach teaching – so do we!
A worthwhile and informative course. I certainly feel this is a much better
approach to teaching phonics and look forward to implementing it with my
learners. Thank you for making it so interesting. Wishing you much success.
Great – very interesting but would probably need to do it again as there was a
lot of information given in a short space of time. Now we have a better idea of
how to teach THRASS.
Very informative. Motivated educators. Excellent visual aids.
Very informative and interesting. A stunning programme that will definitely
work. A lively presentation full of useful tips in the classroom and for using
with parents. Maybe the S.A. distributors could be here with stock to sell to
teachers.
Most interesting and extremely informative. What a lovely programme! I cannot
wait to introduce it to my class – especially the Rap! Thank you for a wonderful
two days!
Really enjoyable. I look forward to doing these things with my children. Thank
you for being so approachable. I feel privileged to have been taught by the
person who designed the programme. Your passion is clear. I think the key will
be getting the parents on board. I look forward to getting on to the website to
learn more. I can’t wait for Sing-A-Long CDs.
The content that we received was fabulous but rather too much for the period.
However, I must say that there is a lot that I learned and this also provided an
opportunity for me as a teacher to hone my teaching and to be more realistic
about literacy teaching. It has made great impact on my professional growth and
development. I would certainly advocate THRASS to the Ministry of Education in
Botswana as I feel a lot of potential in it. The presenter is fantastic. You
have the passion, humour, expertise and that makes you an outstanding
individual.
Great course. Informative. Everything comes together now.
Thanks for everything. Was a great experience. Would recommend it to everyone.
Can’t wait till it is fully implemented! Alan you are really energetic and you
make it worthwhile teaching.
Really enjoyed it.
Very interesting and vibrant. Enjoyed it a lot.
Fascinating and very informative to me as a second English Language speaker and
an educator. I have had a lot of questions about pronunciation of words, i.e.
the difference between a bird and a bed. These are things about the English
language that we were never taught. This has empowered me as an educator to
empower my learners in skills on Language learning.
Works well with OBE because it empowers the learner to work on their own. It was
very well presented and there were lots of great teaching ideas. I also think
this course can be used for all the South African languages as long as one
understands all the terms used, e.g. phoneme, graph etc.
Congratulations on a course that was truly a blessing. Today particularly was
tremendously stimulating and invigorating. Alan Davies is a dynamic, and
inspiring speaker, and this is an innovative course that I believe will mean a
lot to our school. We’d like to thank you for it, and for personally presenting
it here so we could have the privilege of your own input.
Excellent. Sing-A-Long programme will have enormous effect. The writing program
will help a lot for the Foundation Phase (Gr.0-Gr.3). Articulation application
will have a huge effect on our learners (Tswana Speaker). (Mostly English is
second or third language). Some teachers will also need this.
A very interesting course. Enjoyed it all very much. Sometimes a lot of
repetition.
A very interesting course thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you Alan Davies for an
excellent presentation. I am THRASSED and ready to go out and teach my class. I
am so glad I had the opportunity to attend the course. Made so much sense in the
end.
Excellent presentation, lively and fun. Hands-on – made it more understandable.
Very good ideas and integration of various skills. Intense – maybe more courses
so questions and problems can be discussed. Looking forward to this new
approach.
Positive and encouraging. The answer to many children’s spelling and reading
problems! So enthusiastically presented. Very intensive. Many thanks. It was
fun!
Informative and helped to make THRASS a lot clearer. Your enthusiasm is
contagious
It was great. I learned so much and am excited to start.
More detail concerning Assessment. Would appreciate another course as follow-up
to discuss potential problems and solutions to obstacles.
Excellent well presented. Enthusiastic lecturer. A lot to take in in two days.
Maybe three mornings. Thoroughly enjoyed the energy and knowledge of the
lectures.
Excellent thoroughly enjoyed how it was presented. Was not boring. Learned a lot
in the two days. Would love to learn more. THRASS is the programme to use!
Found course very interesting. “Years”, “eons” ago referred to phonemes as
“sounds families” with “different faces” – graphemes! Thanks – it was fun.
A wonderful eye-opener into teaching phonics. I will definitely be re-thinking
the way we teach phonics. A well organised, well presented course.
Well presented with lots of multi-media accessories and apparatus. Thank you for
finally compiling a phonic map for reading and spelling! After being in the USA
for three years and teaching their Literacy Programme I am proud this Programme
has come to our continent.
Interesting with lots of new information to think about. It makes sense to group
the graphemes with the phonemes. Well presented and entertaining.
What an excellent way to teach phonics to learners. The lecturer was
unbelievably innovative and positive. Sitting through a two day course was
relatively easy. So many wonderful ideas to implement in my class.
A high-energy course that has energised me and has (at last) made me excited
about a literacy programme. It is comprehensive and I feel equipped to begin to
change the way our learners think about language and language skills (even at
the age of Gr.5). An excellent approach for support classes. I look forward to
extending my reading on THRASS.
The course is great, interesting and fascinating. I’ve learned things that I did
not know e.g. grew up knowing that there are 5 vowels (a,e,i,o,u) until I became
a teacher. I was told by my teachers consonants are only 21 – that is the
alphabets remaining from the 26.
Very worthwhile and informative. Thank you Alan.
Wonderful approach to teaching learners with special needs. I can see how this
approach can assist me in a practical fashion in my classroom with a particular
focus of individual learners. A programme like this took too long to come to our
shores. Well done. God bless.
100%. Bravo! I’m so glad I was able to attend. I enjoy a challenge and will
certainly use it in my class to empower my pupils. You are a genius.
Enjoyed it a lot.
Very well presented. Information good. Good practical advice and implementation
in classroom.
Presenter very good. At last I can see, or at least I think I have found, a
route to teach my profoundly deaf, and my learners who cannot speak, and my
teenage learner who cannot read.
Alan is an amazing presenter. I think there is merit in a phonemic rather than a
phonics approach. I have no doubt that Alan could teach anyone to read or to
inspire anyone to use THRASS. The integration of different pedagogical makes
this approach fun. I can also imagine some teachers teaching mechanically, using
notes only, not really understanding the difference between digraphs and blends
and having difficulty managing the politics of competing approaches and views
about sequencing/timing of schools.
A colleague has been telling me I have to come to your course. It has really
been worth it as a way of understanding the phonics teaching/reading I see in
schools and approaches teachers take – and now to take up the challenge of
developing pedagogical knowledge, practices that support reading. The
combination of exercise, theory, explanation and anecdote are invaluable. Thanks
for your illuminating two days.
Exciting and invigorating. For the first time in a long time I am excited about
teaching spelling. Thank you for drawing us into the course. I have been on many
when I could easily have fallen asleep. Keep up the good work. Love your sense
of humour.
The course was quite interesting. However, I feel that there are so many things
to tell in a short period of time. So I will suggest that you make this a five
day course. But, hey, I really enjoyed this.
This was a fruitful eye and brain-opening course. Need to be taken into various
small sections as it is having lots to do. Thanks for your efforts.
Excellent lecturer. Informative and interesting. Well-designed programme.
Very informative and interesting. Excellent lecturer – Alan. Very entertaining.
Congratulations on a job well done!
Thoroughly enjoyable. Very informative and interesting. Well worth it. Alan was
great.
Thank you for an “overflowing” information, two days! I hope that, in time, I
will be able to put all sections to good use. Thank you too, for an enthusiastic
presentation.
An excellent course – wonderfully presented. An outstanding way to marry speech
therapy and the teaching of reading and spelling. A new, refreshing approach
which we would certainly be able to use at our school, which is a school for
children with special needs.
Productive, interesting but very short. It was an eye-opener to most of us. We
gained a lot.
Great presentation but needless time was wasted on questions which could have
perhaps been held to the end of a session, this caused unrest and a certain
amount of boredom. It also caused confusion due to unnecessary trailing off of
the topic at hand. Great job, Alan.
Slick, superbly, stunning! Lots of repetition, without us becoming bored, which
meant we felt confident about using the materials by the end of the course. A
good balance between presenting THRASS concepts/ideas and responding to
questions/ideas from audience.
I really, really enjoyed this course. It was worth every bit of my time. I
learnt a lot and have many new ideas. Lots of fun.
Was lots of fun to see your new phonemes! I think it will be fun to do THRASS.
Wonderful experience. I enjoyed every minute and can’t wait to start my Grade 8
learners, who are all second (or 3rd/4th) language speakers. Their spelling is
so poor because of poor pronunciation and poor teaching (!) in the past.
Please don’t criticize programmes that work well for the sake of your programme.
Too much guessing involved.
Fantastic course. Prefer if it could have been presented over more time – way
too much information for two days. Three days would be better. I love the
resource material – it’s hands-on and loads of fun. Yet I do understand why it
is over two days. Where do you get the energy from!
Very interesting and information valuable. The presentation was excellent and
audience participation was continually called upon.
This was a very inspiring, exciting course. The time went past very quickly due
to the entertaining nature of Mr. Davies. I feel fully equipped to tackle THRASS
in my class.
Fascinating. Excellent. I learned a lot. Wish we had more time – more than two
days. Most of the question marks that I had are answered.
What an absolute delight! Talk about REALLY firing a person up – I can’t wait to
start! Involving all the senses, using repetition and explaining in digestible
sizes although we were adults, was smashing – it seemed to consolidate it all.
Thank you for Internet support for those of us who can’t afford the whole kit
and caboodle right off – we are not left floundering. Alan – your 100% belief in
what you’re advocating and your hands-on experience makes us all disciples of
THRASS, The best course I’ve attended – ever!
Wonderful. Learnt a lot. Glad to hear many references made to “Special Ed”;
“Remedial” and “Learner Support”. Will definitely be using THRASS in my classes.
Course should perhaps be over three days, perhaps cover the ‘skills’ using more
practical exercises. Thoroughly enjoyed the Sing-A-Long, interactive book and
CDs etc. You’ve put ‘FUN’ back into learning. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Thoroughly enjoyed. Well presented. Long but certainly not boring. Keen to put
it all into practice.
Splendid! It was a great blessing to learn from Alan. It was also fantastic to
experience the total excellence of the whole training. I am greatly inspired to
learn more and pass it on to my learners.
Brilliant presentation, the interaction with the learners was great and held our
attention well. Very entertaining and informative with practical hands-on
explanations.
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