reading by six - thrass


Please note that supporters of the Reading By Six campaign are united to raise awareness about why it is important that children are given the best opportunity to learn to read early. All however have differing views and strategies, and so comments made may not necessarily reflect the 'general consensus'
Indeed, the very idea of this 'campaign' is to show that regardless of view points or preferences regarding the teaching of reading (writing and spelling) it is possible for us to unite for the sake of children across Australia. It is possible for us to have differing ideas and still work together. It is time to end the 'reading wars', for our children.


'thrass' - Reading by Six advisors

Thrass- Teaching handwriting,
reading and spelling skills


Contact THRASS - enquiries@thrass.com.au

Download Info Brochure

Why do THRASS Support 'Reading by Six'?




Article from Denyse Ritchie here soon

ANALYTIC AND SYNTHETIC PHONICS

Some teachers ask if THRASS is an ‘analytic phonics’ or a ‘synthetic phonics’ approach? Analytic phonics involves whole-to-partteaching, that is, learners analyse lists of ‘whole words’ (learnt by sight in a ‘phonics-free’ stage) to look at the parts (usually the ‘lettersound/s’ at the beginning and end of the words). Synthetic phonics involves children being taught the ‘letter sounds’ (in a ‘word-free’stage) so that they can blend (synthesise) ‘letter sounds’ to create words (that is, part-to-whole). THRASS uses both approaches (each ofthe 120 THRASS words/wholes has a bold grapheme/part) but children are required to identify letters by ‘name’, not ‘sound’, so thatthey can more easily ‘segment and blend’ (analyse and synthesise) the various phonemes of the numerous one-letter, two-letter, three-letter and four-letter spelling-choices. Therefore THRASS differs from the strategies of almost all ‘synthetic phonics’ programs in that itdoes not believe in using ‘letter sounds’ as part of its teaching strategy. We firmly believes that teaching ‘letter sounds’ is an underlyingfactor for potential literacy failure in learners of any age, particularly males, because of their learning style.

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE THRASS PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY

At THRASS, we believe that many children who fail at reading and spelling do so because they have been confused right fromthe beginning of their formal schooling (and even beforehand in the home and pre-school environment), by the deficiencies ofconventional phonics teaching. In addition, many current remedial programs/strategies, continue to deliver further doses of theOLMOSM, unfortunately reinforcing the wrong message. Children exposed to the OLMOSM, who don’t overthrow this method,are caught in what is commonly termed the ‘literacy net’.

THRASS believes that one way to get them out, is to start by explicitlyteaching the building blocks of our language in a linguistically correct manner.• At THRASS we say that reading and spelling difficulties can occur because learners are not taught, from the very beginning, thevarious relationships between speech sounds (phonemes) and spelling choices (graphemes).

• THRASS is a method that helps learners understand the relationships between the 44 phonemes of spoken English, and the 26letters of the alphabet. THRASS believes in giving learners the ‘whole picture’ right from the very beginning - that is, in Englishwe speak 44 phonemes but there are only 26 letters in our alphabet, therefore there must be different grapheme choices for thesephonemes.

• THRASS teaches learners about the ‘Phoneme-Grapheme Principle’. This principle states that the 44 speech sounds (phonemes)of spoken English may be represented by different letters and different combinations of letters. THRASS explicitly teaches thesephonemes and graphemes.

• THRASS works from the big picture to the smaller picture. Many learners, when exposed to the OLMOSM, become confusedabout letter sounds (letters in English do not have sounds) and letter names. As mentioned earlier, the limitations of the OLMOSMare evident in the misspellings of emergent spellers. These examples show that the learner’s awareness of phonemes is good, butit is a limited awareness of graphemes that is causing the incorrect visual image and, hence, the incorrect spelling. Unless learnershave a conscious/unconscious understanding for phonemes and graphemes they will continue to have difficulties with reading andspelling.

• Throughout THRASS, emphasis is placed on developing the learner’s phoneme-grapheme awareness with additional emphasison graphemic awareness. The problem for many learners is not poor phonemic awareness but poor graphemic awareness. That is,they are generally able to hear phonemes in words but don’t have a large enough range of spelling choices, because they havenever been explicitly taught all 44 phonemes and their associated grapheme choices.

• THRASS is an explicit teaching method that focuses on helping learners gain a logical understanding for the building blocks ofliteracy through:- an awareness of the 44 phonemes of spoken English and the associated grapheme choices- an awareness for graphs, digraphs, trigraphs- knowledge of the alphabet, and the naming of the lower-case letters and their capitals- using correct terminology from the very beginning e.g. letter/s, letter name/s, lower-case, capital, phoneme, grapheme, graph, digraph, trigraph, grapheme, word- an awareness that the alphabet is a resource from which letters are selected to represent the phonemes of spoken English- learning handwriting skills - the correct formation of the lower-case and capital letters

• THRASS reduces reading, spelling and handwriting to their basics.
That is:- reading involves changing graphemes (spelling choices) to phonemes (speech sounds)
spelling involves changing phonemes (speech sounds) to graphemes (spelling choices)
handwriting involves drawing lower-case and capital letters using the correct procedures.

SUMMARY

The following information is designed to give the reader a brief overview of THRASS. It should in no way be seen as asubstitute for the content covered in THRASS training courses or information provided in the THRASS Teacher’s Manual.

• THRASS is an acronym for Teaching Handwriting Reading And Spelling Skills.•

THRASS is a multisensory, phoneme-grapheme awareness program, that may be used to prevent and correct literacy problems.THRASS is not just for learners with literacy difficulties. It is a method that can be taught right from the very beginning of theliteracy process to eliminate spelling and reading difficulties before they emerge.

• THRASS uses a phonographic approach, to teach the building blocks of literacy, that is, the 44 phonemes (speech sounds) ofspoken English and the graphemes (spelling choices) of written English.

• THRASS gives learners the whole-picture of English from the beginning, that is, there are 44 phonemes in spoken English butonly 26 letters in the alphabet, therefore there are different grapheme choices for the phonemes in words. Learners then workfrom the ‘big picture’ to ‘smaller pictures’.

• THRASS is an explicit teaching program operating at the word level. The building blocks of word level teaching are thephonemes (speech sounds) of the spoken language. THRASS teaches the realities of our language’s phoneme/graphemerelationships, patterns and orthographics.

• THRASS is not 'the' literacy program but part of the total literacy program.

• THRASS in no way precludes a whole language approach, only ‘bad’ phonics.

• THRASS provides a skill base for teachers and learners, empowering them with a solid understanding of the English languageand the ability to take command of their own teaching/learning.

•THRASS is most effective as a whole-school program, but can be used effectively in small groups or individually.• THRASS does not require the learner to grasp a new set of rules (or the old set for that matter), diacritical markings or handsignals etc. Inconsistent and misleading rules/information such as fairy 'e', silent letters and so called ‘sight words’, become athing of the past when you start using THRASS.

• THRASS can be used with children of all ages, adults and ESL students.

• THRASS can be taught by teachers, teacher aides, speech pathologists and parents.

THRASS is a method, for teaching learners of all ages, about the building blocks of reading and spelling, that is, the 44phonemes (speech sounds) of spoken English and the graphemes (spelling choices) of written English.The THRASS PICTURECHART and related THRASS GRAPHEMECHART provide a concrete whole-picture focus forwork related to the 44 phonemes (speech sounds) and the graphs (one-letter-spelling-choices), digraphs (two-letter-spelling-choices) and trigraphs (three-letter-spelling-choices) of English.

LITERACY THRASS will help you to teach children that, basically, when reading we change spelling choices to speech sounds and when spelling we change speech sounds to spelling choices.

Visit the THRASS web site for more info


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