Everyone knows just how important it is for children to
develop sound literacy skills from an early age and it is
also widely accepted that music, and in particular singing,
can have a wide range of benefits for children. Now British
Educational Psychologist, Alan Davies, is set to launch a
new project, the THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Project, that
will use 44 songs to enable children, and also older
learners, to develop their literacy skills, while at the
same time deriving many other benefits and having an
enormous amount of fun.
THRASS
UK has already earned a reputation for producing highly
successful innovative resources for helping children to read
and spell as part of its widely-acclaimed THRASS (Teaching
Handwriting Reading And Spelling Skills) phonics programme,
and the new THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Project will use 44
songs that parents and others can sing with children to
explain the 44 sounds and 120 main spelling choices of
English. The songs have really memorable tunes in different
musical styles and wonderful imaginative titles such as “The
moon fell out of the sky”, “A great big gorilla” and “You
don’t get pandas in Africa”. They will be available on an
interactive book and an audio CD, which will be complemented
by a 96-page hard-back book and a colouring book. And the
resources will have a truly universal appeal, as Alan Davies
has developed them with the help of experts from around the
world: a music specialist in South Africa, an artist in
Australia, and a computer programmer and Alan’s wife, an
experienced teacher and teacher-trainer, in the UK.
Singing can benefit children in all sorts of different ways
and there are many reasons why singing is such a great
activity for them, and for adults too. Group singing is
particularly powerful in its ability to create a sense of
shared purpose, social unity and collective enjoyment.
Singing is good for children’s health, as it improves
circulation, breathing and posture, and when combined with
movement also helps to combat obesity and increase general
physical fitness. And it is also good for their emotional
well-being, as it can help them express their emotions, and
increase their confidence and communication skills. But
perhaps the most important benefit is that singing has been
shown to accelerate learning and improve the memory. Very
young children have been shown to increase the amount,
quality and understanding of speech developed through
singing activities.
This
is readily born out by the experience of Chris Griffiths,
International Development Manager at THRASS UK, who has been
amazed at the rapid progress that his five-year-old daughter
has already made after just a few days of listening to an
advance copy of the audio CD. “My five-year-old’s response
to the SING-A-LONG CD has convinced me of the tremendous
potential of the THRASS Family SING-A-LONG project. We
played the CD for her in the car while driving around the UK
over Christmas and within the space of a single journey she
knew all the tunes and also many of the words to the songs.
She is also now very quickly learning all the different
sounds and spelling choices and already knows, for example,
that there are two ‘d’s in ladder but only one in dog, one
‘p’ in panda but 2 ‘p’s in hippo, and much more; and we each
now have our favourite songs. This really is the most
wonderful resource and I am sure the project is going to be
extremely successful wherever it is implemented.”
Parents need to understand and use four 'searchlights' for
reading with their children: a ‘Word Recognition
Searchlight’, a ‘Phonics Searchlight’, a ‘Context
Searchlight’ and a ‘Grammar Searchlight’, and the THRASS
Family SING-A-LONG Project will help them to understand
synthetic phonics alongside the three other ‘Searchlights’.
The project will increase their confidence in identifying
the one-, two- and three-letter spelling choices in English
words and saying the sounds that they represent and make it
much easier for both children and adults to master the
sounds and spelling choices of English.
The
THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Project will be launched on 31
January at Holy Rosary School, Edenvale, South Africa, where
children from 14 schools will be giving the world premiere
of the songs that make up the project. The concert will be
attended by VIPs and international delegates to the THRASS
Absa TalkTogether Conference that is being hosted by the
University of the Witwatersrand on 31 January and 1
February. Together with parents, teachers and children from
schools in the area, they will have the chance to see the
tremendous potential of the THRASS Family SING-A-LONG
Project and resources for bringing together singing and
literacy to help children, and older learners too, to
develop their literacy skills. Further concerts will take
place later in the year in South Africa, the UK and the
Caribbean.
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
For
more information about the THRASS Absa TalkTogether Project,
visit
www.talktogether.co.za and
www.thrass.co.uk/talktogether.htm
For details of THRASS Professional Development Courses that
are held regularly in the UK, Europe, West and Southern
Africa and elsewhere, visit
www.thrass.co.uk/courses.htm
Issued by: THRASS UK News Media Centre
www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm
Mike Meade, Media Director, +44 1829 741413 Mob: 07970 151
738
mikemeade@thrass.co.uk
Chris Griffiths, International Development, +30 266 203 1207
chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
