At school I scored very well in four unit English, however despite my passion for writing and literary analysis, my reports consistently mentioned my poor spelling. This week I just completed a phonics course using THRASS (Teaching Handwriting Reading And Spelling Skills). This has been a revolutionary shift in my approach to spelling, reading and writing.
Most approaches to teaching phonics use OLMOSM that is one letter makes one sound method. So the letter A makers the sound a and the letter B makes the sound b and so forth. But how do we cue for spelling the word chair when a is part of a digraph (two letter spelling choice) ai. Or how would you cue for spelling the word boat when a is part of the digraph (two letter spelling choice) oa. In chair and boat the letter A does not make the sound a. In English there are 44 sounds but these can be represented in over a thousand ways. Therefore students (and adults) need a concrete cueing system to help them spell, read and write words correctly.
The National Teaching Inquiry in 2005 mandated that Australian schools teach phonics using a systematic and explicit teaching approach. This approach will ensure mastery of essential alphabetic code breaking skills. THRASS teaches spelling using phonographic methodology. This means that students identify the sounds (phonemes) in a word and then match them on that THRASS Chart. This chart has 120 pictures categorised into 44 boxes of for the different sounds of English.
So when students learn a new word they use the chart to cue correct spelling. For example the word was is w as in wheel, a as in swan and s as in laser. Students know the cues wheel, swan and laser and so will make the correct spelling choice. This gives meaning to spelling so that was is not mistaken for woz. Similarly yawn is not mistaken for yorn and photo is not mistaken for foto. The THRASS chart is not freely available online as it is a copyright resource. However, the chart is worth the investment as it provides a concrete, systematic and explicit tool for learning to spell, read and write. During my TRASS training I became far more confident in my approach to spelling and am looking forward to using this explicit strategy with the students I teach.
