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Welcome back
to THRASS GOES LIVE!
There has
been yet another interesting development from our journey and this time from the
THRASS workshop hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg at
the beginning of June. The workshop, ‘Time for a New Phonics Approach for
Teaching English in Africa?’ was attended by delegates from all over Africa:
South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan, Namibia, Ghana and Nigeria, as well as by
delegates from the South African Government.
And amongst
those delegates were 10 members of the teaching staff from Penryn College, which
is at the heart of the Mpumalanga Lowveld, close to the Kruger National Park and
overlooking the capital city of Nelspruit.
Penryn
College operates the largest school-based outreach programme in Africa which is
called Penreach and on Saturday, 12 August Alan Davies, the British Educational
Psychologist who has pioneered the THRASS synthetic phonics method of teaching
English gave a presentation of THRASS to 700 teachers, some of whom had
travelled as far as 200 kms to attend the introductory workshop.
And the
exciting news is that the Penreach project is now thinking about implementing
THRASS from January 2007 so that the teachers who come to the project one
Saturday a month will do some THRASS training, led by the Penryn College staff.
This will obviously create a remarkable opportunity for those 700 attendees to
spread the word about THRASS, and to secure the support of the various funding
agencies.
Click on the
links below the main picture on the left if you would like to see various pictures of
the day and those 700 teachers doing the Letter Name Rap led by Alan Davies.
Goes Live! Index
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