Part 1: THRASS SING-A-LONG for classes. Part 2: TEACHING THRASS for the whole school.

Hilarious and educational! A wonderful workshop.

Very educative. Best phonics workshop that I have attended!

Brilliant! This workshop will go down in history as one of the major milestones in the reawakening of the education system in Zimbabwe. I have learnt a lot! Well done Alan and Hilary!

Brilliant! I have learnt a lot of creativity in spelling and pronunciation. From today, my lessons will be full of fun and my pupils will be able to spell, write and read fluently. THRASS is very helpful.

A logical presentation of content that will help teachers to easily manoeuvre language mastery among the beginners, and one that will help children master and integrate learning of spelling with English language development. THRASS has strong cross-curricular links and opens new doors to teaching and learning. I am impressed!

Wow! Wonderful! An eye-opener. Creative. Loved the activities. The information will not only empower Zimbabwean children but parents, college students and people who work with English.

The sensible way to teach reading and spelling. Let’s start the THRASS revolution in Zimbabwe!

Very informative. We were all fully involved. Very useful for teaching essential literacy skills.

Best phonics program that I have come across as a pupil, student, teacher and implementer of education programs. All robust structures have a solid foundation – THRASS has a map with a “home” for each of the 44 sounds. Learners are taught to read and spell the 120 English keywords, and to use the phonemes and graphemes in them to give unknown words a home on the picturechart. I also believe that this program teaches good pronunciation and it allows all involved to have a universal way of speaking the English language fluently.

Educational and interesting. It was also exciting!

Enriching, effective and the whole THRASS programme is exciting and amazing!

THRASS develops the whole child. It is very entertaining, effective and practical and uses all five senses. It develops a wide vocabulary. It is fun and improves word attack skills. It helps teachers to be creative. It improves listening and concentration skills. It helps to break monotony and to keep children ‘alive’ and active. It teaches good pronunciation. To really succeed, the full kit is needed.

Educational for one’s whole life – as a parent and teacher!

Informative. Educational. Interesting. An eye opener. Fun. Exciting.

Good and effective. It equips the teacher with all the skills to teach reading, handwriting and spelling. If we follow this way of teaching, our pass rate and understanding of English should improve greatly. An excellent workshop by Alan and Hilary. We will keep the fire burning!

An eye-opener. Very educative. I now know there are 44 speech sounds and 120 keygraphemes!

Very interesting and informative way of teaching reading and spelling to the young ones. Course was well organised, stimulating and interesting.

Eye-opening and we are under-utilising the THRASS resources we have! I have been inspired a lot!

Inspirational. The presentations were clear and supported with good visual and audio aids.

Exciting, interesting and fruitful. An eye-opener!

Educative, rich and effective!

A very good workshop. It has opened up a number of strategies to use in the teaching and learning process. The teaching of reading and spelling was difficult but with the THRASS workshop, my teaching is going to improve and my children are going to improve greatly! Hopefully, we are going to have more of such courses.

Really educative. Alan and Hilary were knowledgeable. There was great use of both visual and audio teaching aids which was a really good way of reinforcing the matter. Learnt that children learn more when they are involved in the learning through talking, reading, writing and most enjoyably singing!

Informative. I would love to attend more courses. Well presented.

The jigsaw puzzle of THRASS had pieces missing. Now the pieces are there and just need to be re-arranged or re-fitted to complete the puzzle. Very worthwhile and, hopefully, for the whole staff!

A packed two days on what THRASS is and how it can be incorporated in schools with or without the resources. It has all started to make sense, no longer in the dark. Look forward to the next course!

An eye opener. I wish we had this workshop before introducing THRASS to the children! There are now lots of activities to do and I hope to have stars in spelling work, reading work and written work.

Well presented. Very educational.

Educational.

Wonderful.

We have been well educated from the horse’s mouth! Ready to give the right information to children. Greatly honoured to be the first participants in Zimbabwe!

Very enlightening. I really benefited from this workshop and I am going to implement THRASS in my everyday teaching to improve the reading, spelling, handwriting and comprehension skills.

An eye-opener. Let’s have more of these courses in the future!

Educational. Exciting. SMART – Specific. Measurable. Accurate. Reasonable. Timeframe.

Wonderful.

I have been reading a lot about THRASS – your performances were brilliant. Keep it up!

Fruitful and brilliant. I learnt new methods for teaching pronunciation! An educative course for all.

The program was of great help to us. Zimbabwe will have more children who can write well, read well and they will be the best spelling writers.

I feel guilty not teaching my children the sensible way of reading and spelling BUT I will rectify this error next term! Here we come with THRASS!

Great! Very educative and action packed. It was a big eye-opener to all of us. There was thorough research and outstanding use of resources. Excellent integration. Exciting. God Bless.

Very successful. The facilitators were able to teach us several phonemes which we were teaching wrongly. The videos were informative and useful. Well done Alan and Hilary.

Brilliant. This is a historical chapter in the teaching of reading using THRASS in Zimbabwe. It is really helpful that, through the experience from other African countries, Alan and Hilary have really got to the bottom of our problems in articulation of the English Language, particularly the fact that we generally miss out the last sound in words! As Zimbabwean teachers we agreed that this is a real problem, and are willing to try and improve for the benefit of the children in our classes. I am really excited to be associated with THRASS in Zimbabwe.

Lively presentation. Gave me a new perspective and dimension on teaching aspects/points I have always taken for granted. Beauty of THRASS is in the ability to exploit both sound and vision – highly interactive. Would have liked more exposure so that I become more adept.

It was an enlightening experience. Have been broadened in my way of thinking and teaching. Keep us informed and we will do likewise. Be blessed for your great work. It could have been for longer!

Wonderful presentation from both Alan and Hilary. A lot of relevant research about Zimbabwe was done and that was very good. It’s a wonderful programme that is going to make both teaching and learning an easy task. We have learned about great thinkers in philosophy, psychology etc, let’s also read about your philosophy as a teacher Mr Davies. Great job!

The course has notably been an eye-opener to me as a teacher over the long period of wrongly giving information to innocent pupils and disadvantaging them in acquiring reading and writing correct spellings, as well as being articulate in speaking as they pronounce various words as they develop in life. The course has helped a lot in equipping me with the skills.

A real eye-opener. I have been teaching for over 20 years but taught English phonics wrongly. This workshop has made me a better and more knowledgeable teacher. Methods used by the presenters were very effective and they were fantastic – woo! Looking forward to more courses.

Very worthwhile. I learnt the correct way to pronounce the 24 consonants and 20 vowels and when and how they are used. It will help me to go back to my school and correct what I was doing wrong.

An eye opener and very educative. I hope that it will cascade to all schools in Zimbabwe as well as teacher training colleges. The inclusion of song and dance in the learning process will make learners active participants in the learning process. This will aid learners to improve their pronunciation.

An exciting programme that empowers teachers to teach aspects of language effectively and efficiently, while affording learners an opportunity to enjoy learning. We learnt and benefited a lot.