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The THRASS English phonics programme has
for some time been recognised as having the potential to more
than double the normal rate of progress for reading and
spelling in English. And now THRASS UK is set to change lives
with its new SOUND IT OUT software that will give parents a
better understanding of English phonics and the confidence
they need to help their children at home.
International research consistently shows
that, when it comes to developing a love of reading, children
who are helped at home get a head start by learning from an
early age that reading is fun and important. The evidence is
so compelling that governments often require schools to run
information evenings for parents of young children, focusing
on how to share familiar books on a daily basis. Parents are
advised to help children from as young as five ‘sound out’
words they cannot read using letter sounds rather than the
names of letters; in other words, to use simple phonics.
However, although simple phonics may be fine for words like
‘cat’, ‘dog’ and ‘ant’, problems arise when the children try
to sound out basic words like 'he', 'she', ‘my’, ‘see’, ‘was’
and ‘said’, not to mention many thousands of other English
words, in which the letters do not represent the one sound
that has been taught and which often include letters in groups
of two, three and four that represent only one sound.
And there is a further problem in that many parents are not
confident with the sounds and spellings in these words because
they do not have a good understanding of the 44 sounds of
English and their key spelling choices. Busy teachers do not
have time to
explain the basics of English Phonics to parents
and, even if they did, many parents are not familiar with the
words commonly used when teaching phonics ie phoneme,
grapheme, keygrapheme, graph, digraph, trigraph and quadgraph.
Alan Davies, the
British educational psychologist credited with creating the
English Phonics Table, has for some time been aware of this
widespread problem and has now used his extensive national and
international experience of working with teachers, parents and
children over several decades to produce the groundbreaking
SOUND IT OUT software. This is set to change lives by
tackling the problem of
educating parents in the basics of phonics (beyond each letter
having just one sound and also a name) so that they will be
able to do much more to help their children. And, more
importantly, the SOUND IT OUT software will make it possible
to achieve this at very little cost.
SOUND IT OUT is
focused entirely on the English Phonics Table and uses
120 keywords, each of which has a keygrapheme (key spelling
choice) to give parents a better understanding of the 44
sounds and 120 key spelling choices of English. This gives
them the building blocks to read and spell thousands of other
words and gives them more confidence to help at home with
words their children have difficulty reading.
The software has several components: an
interactive Picturechart, five levels of structured teaching
and an interactive Word Bank. And there will also be five
SOUND IT OUT games with their accompanying videos. It
has been programmed by
THRASS UK Media Director, Mike Meade, who also programmed the
highly successful THRASS Phoneme Machine software that uses
the International Phonetic Alphabet
and moving human lips to demonstrate the pronunciation of
sounds and hundreds of frequently used English words
and is used by
thousands of schools in many countries around the world.
You can
already read about the SOUND IT OUT software and how to use
it, download a leaflet for parents and see a video of the
first SOUND IT OUT workshop on the SOUND IT OUT temporary
website. And more videos from South Africa, Swaziland and
Zimbabwe will be added over the next few weeks. In addition, a
range of other resources that support SOUND IT OUT is already
available.
THRASS SOUND
IT OUT is primarily for parents but it is also ideal for many
other groups including teachers, teaching assistants, speech
therapists, educational psychologists and of course children!
It will be launched on Wednesday, 26 May, when it will be
available to download from the SOUND IT OUT website. It will
be available on disc from July.
So have a
look at the videos and user guide and see how SOUND IT OUT can
give you a better understanding of English phonics. And
remember, “If in doubt, SOUND IT OUT!”
To find out more about the SOUND IT OUT
software and how to use it, visit the website at
www.thrass.co.uk/sio.htm
You can find a selection of videos and
download the SOUND IT OUT User Guide in Powerpoint or PDF
format from the Video and User Guide at
http://www.thrass.co.uk/vaug.htm
The THRASS extensive picture-based training
website for schools and parents with easy access to a wide
range of resources and support materials and extensive
evidence of the widespread success of THRASS is at
www.thrass.co.uk/teaching.htm
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
or +44 151 324 3458
chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
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