Supporting the Literacy Development of Students Who Are Deaf/Hard of Hearing in Inclusive Classrooms

Abstract

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing present unique opportunities and challenges for literacy instruction in mainstream classrooms. By addressing the specific needs of this diverse student community, teachers are given the chance to sharpen instruction and create learning opportunities for the entire class. The authors discuss two easy‐to‐follow principles that will increase literacy outcomes for students who are deaf or hard of hearing and all other learners by making content and thinking visible and optimizing access to the language and thoughts of all readers and writers. Practical tips and strategies are based on research and experience across a range of settings, including schools for the deaf with signing students, and mainstream classrooms with students who use listening and spoken language are included.

Reading Development of Students Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Inclusive Education Classrooms

“…To address reading challenges, teachers need an adequate understanding of the reading curriculum content, their students' demographic information, and skills to modify and accommodate the reading content based on their students' individual differences [8,46,47]. Specifically, students with hearing loss come to schools with a rich diversity of experiences [48].…”

“…This information helps teachers to develop effective reading instructional and appropriate learning activities for their students. Another essential element for ensuring the use of necessary modifications and accommodations of the reading curriculum content is to develop an individual education plan (IEP) [44,46]. The IEP team works together to identify and describe conditions to facilitate a child's access to the general education curriculum.…”

“…In addition to the academic benefits, the goal of inclusion for d/Dhh students is to develop their communication and social interaction skills with hearing teachers and peers [1,46]. The active interaction and participation in the classroom is essential for students' acquisition of effective communication and language skills and strategies [53].…”

“…Further, when d/Dhh students interact with hearing students, this assists them to improve their experiences and their prior knowledge of the topics discussed in the classroom-and, subsequently, this should enhance the development of reading/literacy skills. However, many d/Dhh students feel isolated in the inclusive education classroom because they cannot make friends and participate in classroom activities due to their communication difficulties [46,54]. The lack of communication skills and difficulty in accessing spoken phonology might also negatively influence the students' abilities to learn to read.…”

Interactive description to enhance accessibility and experience of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in museums

“…One of the main challenges DHH visitors face when encountering text descriptions is difficulty reading the text. Generally speaking, they have lower literacy skills than hearing people [ 15 , 16 , 33 ], including problems with reading and understanding text due to unfamiliar syntactic structures or limited vocabulary skills [ 4 , 13 , 14 , 31 ]. Due to reading difficulties, many DHH individuals simply visually observe the object or skim descriptions to get a vague idea rather than grasping in-depth information or the full back-story contained in museum descriptions; as a result, their museum experience is confined to a limited or shallow level of understanding.…”