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Earlier this year, I CAN, the national education charity
that provides education services for children with speech
and language impairments, announced that it had chosen to
further increase the use of the THRASS (Teaching Handwriting
Reading And Spelling Skills) phonics programme at its Meath
School in Surrey. Thirty teachers, assistants and therapists
at the school have just attended a THRASS two-day Accredited
Certificate Course, sponsored by THRASS UK, and their
comments confirm the valuable role that THRASS can play in
maximising the potential children with special needs. “If it
had been around 20 years ago it would have saved a lot of
heartache for my own children.” “I can see how we can use it
with our children, who have severe and complex speech,
language and communication needs.” “It made me question how
my dyslexic child was taught and how he still struggles as a
teenager.” These were just some of the comments made by
those attending the course.
Many
children with a communication disability can succeed in
mainstream education, particularly where pupils have access
to the specialist staff and resources they need. However,
some children with a severe or complex communication
disability require specialist placement for some or all of
their education and I CAN therefore has two special schools
which together provide intensive support for pupils aged
four to 19: Dawn House School in Nottingham and Meath School
in Surrey. I CAN has also been working with the Department
for Children, Schools and Families to develop its new £2
million Inclusion Development Programme project to boost the
confidence of teachers, support staff and early years
practitioners.
The
internationally acclaimed THRASS (Teaching Handwriting
Reading And Spelling Skills) phonics programme, pioneered by
British Educational Psychologist Alan Davies, is used in
thousands of nurseries and primary schools in Europe and
Africa and has been shown to have the potential to at least
double the normal rate of progress made by primary school
children who have reading and spelling difficulties. It is
therefore of no little significance that I CAN has chosen to
extend the use of the THRASS programme at Meath School,
where severe and complex communication disabilities are the
primary disability, many pupils also have difficulties with
fine and/or gross motor co-ordination, attention control and
accessing the curriculum, and some pupils may have an
additional learning need associated with mild autistic
characteristics.
The
fundamental belief behind the THRASS programme is that the
process of learning to read and write changes and improves a
child's verbal ability, general knowledge, memory, intellect
and social behaviour. In keeping with this belief, a key
feature of the programme is that essential speaking and
listening skills are taught from the outset, in the first of
10 stages, known as Picture Location. In this stage,
teachers, assistants and parents work together to develop
essential speaking and listening skills by acting-out,
matching, naming, describing, categorizing and discussing
120 key pictures with their children. The creation of
phrases, sentences and stories by the children is also very
much encouraged and celebrated in order to develop
imagination, competence and confidence in the children.
Two of
the resources offered by THRASS are of particular value for
teaching children with learning difficulties: the Phoneme
Machine and the Calendar Charts for early language learning.
The Phoneme Machine is a groundbreaking computer programme
that uses moving human lips and the International Phonetic
Alphabet to teach children, and indeed learners of all ages
and abilities, to read and spell in an entertaining and fun
way. The value of the Phoneme Machine was recently
recognised in the September 2007 edition of Independent
Talking Points, the magazine of the Association of
Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice (ASLTIP),
in which Catherine Redmayne, the editor, wrote, “I would
have paid just for some bits of this programme. Considering
the whole thing was free to download, it was a wonderful
offering from THRASS”.
The
other resource is free Calendar Charts for early language
learning that help develop essential speaking and listening
skills, including general knowledge, memory, intellect and
social skills and are available in several European and
African languages. Users of the Phoneme Machine can also
download interactive versions of these with children's
voices saying the days, dates, months, numbers from one to
20, the 10 main colours and the names of the 26 lower-case
letters (and their associated capitals).
The
THRASS phonics programme is also enjoying huge success in
South Africa where it is receiving corporate sponsorship
from South Africa’s Absa Bank through the THRASS Absa
TalkTogether Literacy Project, a unique educational
partnership that is aiming to revolutionise the teaching and
learning of language in South Africa through partnerships
between primary schools, universities and other
organizations.
THRASS
UK is working collaboratively with I CAN and other
organisations in the campaign to help children communicate.
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
To
learn more about I CAN, its Make Chatter Matter
campaign and Meath School, visit
www.ican.org.uk
For a
summary of the main features of THRASS and the benefits of
using THRASS, (including comments from teachers and
parents), visit
www.thrass.co.uk/keyfacts.htm
For more information about the THRASS Phoneme Machine
Version 5 and to register for a free download of the
software, visit
www.phonememachine.com
The THRASS multi-lingual calendar charts and associated
software can be downloaded free-of-charge from
www.thrass.co.uk/cart/cc.htm
To
read the independent review of the THRASS Phoneme Machine
that appeared in the September 2007 edition of Independent
Talking Points, visit
http://www.thrass.co.uk/asltip.htm
Demonstration lessons using THRASS can be viewed as
videostreams or downloaded from
www.thrass.co.uk/tvc.htm
For
details of THRASS Professional Development Courses that are
held regularly in the UK, Europe, West and Southern Africa,
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
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