THRASS UK has earned a reputation for producing
highly successful innovative resources for helping children
to read and spell, and it has just announced the launch of a
new set of resources that, in addition to being fantastic
resources in their own right, look set to make a major
contribution to the effectiveness of two new UK Government
programmes. The THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Resources, to be
launched at the end of January, will have the potential to
make a major contribution to the effectiveness of the
Government’s 2008 National Year of Reading and also to
that of ‘Sing Up’, the new Government-sponsored singing
programme for primary school children.
"The 2008 National Year of Reading will create a
powerful focus of opportunities and activities, so that
children, families and adult learners understand the
benefits that reading for pleasure and purpose can bring to
change their lives." This is the vision of Ed Balls,
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, for
the 2008 National Year of Reading, during which he wants
every parent to make the effort to hear their
children read regularly and businesses to encourage staff to
volunteer to hear schoolchildren read, in order to help
build a more skilled national workforce.
However, many parents and adult volunteers are not
confident with identifying the one-, two- and
three-letter spelling choices in English words
and saying the sounds that they represent. 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’, as set out in the National Literacy Strategy
that the UK Government abandoned in 2005. The Government’s
new synthetic phonics programme, ‘Letters and Sounds’,
focuses on the ‘Phonics Searchlight’, an approach which
is inadequate for both parents and young children.
THRASS UK has already
produced many resources (an extensive picture-based website,
training courses, interactive Calendar Charts and the
groundbreaking Phoneme Machine software) to make it easier
for parents to help their children to read, as part of its
widely-acclaimed THRASS (Teaching Handwriting Reading And
Spelling Skills) phonics programme. Now, mindful of the lack
of confidence of many parents, and also of many teachers and
teaching assistants, British educational psychologist, Alan
Davies, an expert in synthetic phonics who has
pioneered the THRASS programme, has developed the
THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Resources. The Resources will help
parents and others understand synthetic phonics alongside
the three other ‘searchlights’ and make it much easier
for children and adults
to master the sounds and spelling choices of English.
The THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Resources, which will
comprise a 96-page hard-back book, an interactive book, an
audio CD and a colouring book, will use 44 songs that
parents and others can sing with children to explain the 44
sounds and 120 main spelling choices of English. And the
Resources will have a truly universal appeal, as they have
been developed 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.
But it isn’t just to the effectiveness of the 2008
National Year of Reading that the THRASS Family SING-A-LONG
Resources will make such a valuable contribution. They will
also contribute to the effectiveness of ‘Sing Up’, the
new Government-sponsored singing programme for primary
school children that is aiming to make singing in primary
schools, the home and the wider community central to young
children’s lives. Singing can benefit children in many
different ways and there are many reasons why singing is
such a great activity for them. Group singing is
particularly effective for increasing children’s social
skills, singing is good for their health and for their
emotional well-being, and it can also increase their
confidence and improve their communication skills. But
perhaps the most important benefit is that singing has been
shown to accelerate learning and improve the memory, one of
Alan Davies’ main reasons for developing the SING-A-LONG
Resources.
2007 was extremely successful for THRASS UK, with the
highlight of the year the corporate sponsorship of the
THRASS phonics programme by Absa Bank, a member of the
Barclays Group, in South Africa through the THRASS Absa
TalkTogether Literacy Project launched in July, and 2008
looks set to be even more successful. Absa Bank and Pritt
are to be the founding principal sponsors of the THRASS
SING-A-LONG project in South Africa and major construction
company, Murray & Roberts, is set to become an associate
sponsor of SING-A-LONG in early childhood development
centres in Soweto and elsewhere. The THRASS Absa
TalkTogether team will also be continuing discussions with
Intel about incorporating the SING-A-LONG Interactive Book
and the Phoneme Machine software, which Intel has assessed
as excellent, into its Classmate PCs and ‘Skoool’ global
programme for schools.
The new THRASS Family SING-A-LONG Resources will provide
an excellent opportunity for parents, teachers and children
to make an early start to focus on reading and at the same
time make singing central to young children’s lives. The
Resources certainly look set to make a major contribution to
the effectiveness of both UK Government programmes, as well
as being enormously successful in their own right.
The THRASS picture-based training website with
access to a wide range of resources and support materials,
and extensive evidence of the widespread success of THRASS
is at 
