Literacy Workshop 2: Developing English in a Sign/Bilingual School
Presented on Wednesday 28 February 2007
Live English Work at Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children
Mark Varley
Developing Phonological Awareness Skills: An overview of the use of THRASS
The Phoneme - Grapheme Principle
/m/ - m, mm, mb
/f/ - f, ff, ph
/s/ - s, ss, se, c, ce
The Grapheme - Catch All
/f/ - f, ff, ph, *
/f/ - cough
/f/ - f, ff, ph, *gh
Does It Look Right?
/f/ - f, ff, ph, *gh
fish
ffish
phish
ghish
How is THRASS different?
O.L.M.O.S. 23 phonemes vs Phoneme - Grapheme Principle 44 phonemes
Phonographic Skills
Graphemes to Phonemes = Blending (Reading)
Phonemes to Graphemes = Segmenting (Spelling)
Why did we need THRASS?
- School Self-Evaluation & School Performance
- End of Key Stage 2 NC Assessments
- Development and use of decoding strategies
- Need for a whole school approach
Why did we need THRASS at Frank Barnes?
Developing Phonological Awareness
What is phonological awareness?
- Awareness and skills related to the internal structure of words
- Underpins reading skills
- Need to have knowledge of phoneme- grapheme correspondencies (the sounds/ lip shapes that match with different spelling choices)
- Phonological awareness will develop in a language rich environment
Developing Phonological Awareness
- For deaf children research is emerging, but still limited.
useful background texts Stern (1996) and Lebayert (The Roles of Phonological Codes) - Deaf children show phonological awareness through
- Lexical decision making (real vs nonsense words)
- Rhyme judgements
- Use of phoneme- grapheme correspondancies - Early fingerspelling strengthens graphemic awareness
- Skills affected by frequency and regularity of words
Developing Phonological Awareness
- Audit of Frank Barnes teaching staff approaches to teaching literacy:
- Current approaches
- Understanding of terms
- Can deaf children develop phonological awareness - Need to link BSL, fingerspelling and lip reading skills development to literacy work.
Summary of practice to date
- Development in understanding and skills in key areas, & progress in metalinguistic awareness within THRASS sessions
- Use of THRASS as a tool to develop phonographic skills, embedding it into daily literacy practice.
- Use of Bigmouth to provide visual information on articulation and development of Word File sheets to support spelling
- Use of colour coded lip patterns to support Live English skills
- Use of Visual Phonics (developed by Babs Day, Longwill School)
- THRASS assessments available
- SLT assessment of lip reading and speech perception skills.
- Long term:
- Quantify and measure impact of approach through analysis of reading behaviour and summative reading assessments.
- Develop a ‘SATS’ style spelling assessment.
Summary of practice to date
- Development in understanding and skills in key areas, & progress in metalinguistic awareness within THRASS sessions
- Use of THRASS as a tool to develop phonographic skills, embedding it into daily literacy practice.
- Use of Bigmouth to provide visual information on articulation and development of Word File sheets to support spelling
- Use of colour coded lip patterns to support Live English skills
- Use of Visual Phonics (developed by Babs Day, Longwill School)
- THRASS assessments available
- SLT assessment of lipreading and speech perception skills
- Long term:
- Quantify and measure impact of approach through analysis of reading behaviour and summative reading assessments
- Develop a ‘SATS’ style spelling assessment
Adapting approaches/ materials for phonological awareness work
- Developing signs for concepts in BSL
- Using spoken language materials/ resources with sign support, explaining concepts and ideas in BSL
- Sharing ideas with colleagues in other settings (through professional networks, eg; SALTIBAD)
- Colour coding system with Bigmouth lip-shape resources
Our recipe for developing this work…
Decide what you want to make:
- Honest dialogue between different professionals/ perspectives
- Clarity of roles
Give it a try with some new ingredients:
- Working collaboratively to try different approaches
Taste it to see if it’s any good:
- Evaluate what works – try again if needed
- Enjoy what you try out!
THRASS Letter Name Rap
A B O P
A B C O P Q
A B C D E F G O P Q R S T U
H I V W
H I J V W X
H I J K L M N V W X Y Z Z Z
Phonological Awareness Quiz
1. How many animals on the chart?
2. Which picture comes after net?
3. How many graphemes match the phoneme /m/, what are they?
4. How many digraphs match the phoneme /s/?
5. What is the initial phoneme in fish? What is the name of the grapheme that matches it?