Support
home-grown reading aid
1
March 1996
Times
Educational Supplement
The 'TES' was a weekly UK publication
aimed primarily at school teachers in the UK
I
was at the Birmingham Education Show in March
'95 when I first saw THRASS - the handwriting,
reading and spelling sequence - programme which,
along with Reading Recovery, has generated
letters recently.
As
an experienced teacher I was interested in the
approach that Alan Davies was taking in the
teaching of literacy skills. Since the
exhibition, having used the programme myself, I
have learned a great deal about teaching
language skills, centred around the 44 speech
sounds (phonemes) of spoken English and the
letters and letter combinations used to
represent them (graphemes).
THRASS,
a clearly-explained and simple approach to
teaching the building blocks of spoken and
written English, must be applauded as a
significant education resource. What is more,
the programme is a significant educational
resource developed in Britain.
The
results of the Sheffield project on THRASS drew
attention to the "substantial gains"
made by the children and concluded that
"Almost without exception, the pilot
teachers felt that THRASS should be used as an
early intervention approach where the gap
between children encountering reading
difficulties and their peers is not too
wide."
Long-term
evidence from here and from New Zealand (TES,
August 25, 1995) actually indicates that about
one third of children on the Reading Recovery
programme fail.
Why continue to spend millions of pounds on
schemes that have been used without resounding
success in other countries, especially when
short-term evidence on THRASS results in one of
your own headteachers referring to some
non-readers' progress as "phenomenal"?
With
regards to Dr Hurry's letter (TES, February 9),
there is a "magic bullet" in the
teaching of literacy skills and Britain holds
the gun. In the not-too-distant future the
THRASS programme will be seen as a significant
international resource in the teaching of spoken
and written English.
Many
of the teachers attending THRASS courses would
agree with the statement that "THRASS has
clearly explained to me, for the first time, how
to teach reading and spelling. I wish I had know
about the programme when I first started
teaching."
For myself - as the co-author of The THRASS
primary special needs pack and knowing those
children with whom I have used THRASS in
Australia - I thank Alan Davies for continuing
his long struggle to have the programme
recognised.
DENYSE
RITCHIE
City Beach, Western Australia |