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THRASS UK
is delighted to announce that it is to be a key partner in
the forthcoming Memory 4 Teachers project, a major new ICT
initiative in the UK education sector.
The THRASS (Teaching Handwriting Reading And Spelling
Skills) synthetic phonics programme is widely accepted as
having the potential to more than double the normal rate of
progress for reading and spelling in English, and the
inclusion of THRASS software in Memory 4 Teachers will make
the THRASS programme readily available to thousands more
teachers and educators across the UK.
The Memory 4 Teachers project has been developed in
association with local authorities and teacher unions to
provide support to teachers and educators in addressing
their ever-increasing workloads. The project aims to provide
800,000 teachers in the UK with free fully interactive
memory sticks, in which will be embedded free educational
resources for their easy reference, as well as access to
selected websites and free file storage. Worksheets, lesson
plans, homework guides as well as many other useful tools
will be readily available.
As part of the Memory 4 Teachers project, teachers have
specifically requested the inclusion of guided training and
speech, reading and spelling skills resources for teaching
children with hearing impairments. In response to this
demand, THRASS UK will be contributing the latest version of
its groundbreaking Phoneme Machine software to the project.
The Phoneme Machine uses moving human lips to pronounce the
sounds (phonemes) in hundreds of frequently used English
words and the latest version, Phoneme Machine 6.0, which
will now be launched in January 2009 at the BETT Show (the
world’s largest educational technology event), will include
a Cued Speech option in which the shapes, positions and
movements of the hands will be displayed alongside the
moving human lips, with the cueing for each of the 500
basewords of English demonstrated in a video box.
But the Phoneme Machine isn’t just for teaching children
with hearing impairments; it is an excellent resource for
teaching children of all ages and abilities the fundamental
building blocks of English in an entertaining and fun way.
THRASS UK will also be contributing a range of other
resources to the memory sticks, suitable for teaching
learners of all ages and abilities, and there will be a link
to the THRASS UK website, so that it will be easy for
teachers to obtain further information.
The Memory 4 Teachers project is being promoted by RGS
Europe Ltd. The RGS Media Group has been working with the
public, voluntary and private business sectors providing
creative and cost efficient media solutions specifically
within the UK education sector since 1998. The education
sector is a particularly sensitive and specialised market
place, and RGS has worked on some of the largest projects
ever undertaken within this sector including Sainsbury’s
Active Kids, Tesco’s Computers for Schools and Tesco’s Great
School Run. Memory 4 Teachers joins these prestigious
campaigns as the latest education initiative that RGS is
promoting.
Alan Davies, Executive Director of THRASS UK, is extremely
pleased with this latest development: “THRASS UK is
delighted to have been invited to be part of this exciting
project and to have the opportunity to provide guided
training and speech, reading and spelling skills resources
for teachers of children with hearing impairments. However,
the software that we are providing isn’t just for teachers
of children with hearing impairments and we are sure that it
will be extremely useful to all teachers. ”
And Simon Caplan, the Memory 4 Teachers Campaign Director,
is also delighted: “We had a specific request from teachers
of children with hearing impairments for access to guided
training and speech, reading and spelling skills resources
and we are extremely pleased that THRASS UK has accepted our
invitation to undertake this fundamental role in the
project.”
THRASS, pioneered by British Educational Psychologist Alan
Davies, is a whole-school synthetic phonics programme for
teaching learners of all ages and abilities using pictures
and keywords. It helps learners to understand the building
blocks of the English language by teaching them about the 44
phonemes (speech sounds) of spoken English and the 120
graphemes (spelling choices) of written English.
THRASS meets all the criteria for a good phonics programme
published by the UK Department for Children, Schools and
Families (DCSF), and the THRASS programme is being used with
resounding success in thousands of schools across Europe,
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the USA.
Wherever it is used, it surpasses all expectations and using
THRASS in a balanced language curriculum can more than
double the normal rate of progress for learning reading and
spelling for primary and secondary school children, and also
for dyslexics and those for whom English is not their first
language.
It is an indication of the significance of THRASS that in
South Africa it is being sponsored by Absa Bank, a member of
the Barclays Group, through the THRASS Absa TalkTogether
Project. In addition, the THRASS Accredited Certificate is
already a compulsory module for Foundation Phase student
teachers at six South African universities.
Notes to Editors
The THRASS extensive picture-based training website for
schools and parents with access to a wide range of resources
and support materials, and extensive evidence of the
widespread success of THRASS and details of THRASS
Professional Development Courses is at
www.thrass.co.uk/teaching.htm
THRASS UK expects to launch the Phoneme Machine 6.0 in
January 2009. Anyone who wishes to be informed when the
software becomes available for download, should visit
www.thrass.co.uk/cuedspeech.htm
For full details of the Memory 4 Teachers Project, visit
www.memory4teachers.co.uk where teachers can also
register for the free USB memory stick.
Issued by: THRASS UK News Media Centre
www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm
Mike Meade, Media Director, +44 1829 741413 Mob: +44 7970
151 738
mikemeade@thrass.co.uk
Chris Griffiths, International Development, +30 266 203 1207
chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
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