This guide provides parents with strategies for helping a deaf child learn to read and write, offering activities that parents can do at home with their deaf child and suggestions for working with the child's school and teachers. Emphasis is on the developmental link between American Sign Language a

There is a robust body of knowledge suggesting that early language and literacy experiences significantly impact on future academic achievement. In contrast, relatively little has been written with respect to the early literacy development and experiences of deaf children. In Early Literacy Development in Deaf Children, Connie Mayer and Beverly J. Trezek seek to fill this gap by providing an in-depth exploration of how young deaf children learn to read and write, identifying the foundational knowledge, abilities, and skills that are fundamental to this process. They provide an overview of the latest research and present a model of early literacy development to guide their discussion on topics such as teaching reading and writing, curriculum and interventions, bilingualism, and assessment. Throughout, they concentrate on the ways in which young learners with hearing loss are similar to, or different from, their hearing age peers and the consequent implications for research and practice. Their discussion is wide-reaching, as they focus on children from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, those with additional disabilities and hearing losses ranging from mild to profound, and those using a range of communication modalities and amplification technologies, including cochlear implants. With the implementation of Universal Newborn Hearing Screening and advancements in hearing technologies that have heightened both the emphasis on literacy development in the early years and the importance of these years in the ultimate development of age-appropriate reading and reading outcomes, this timely text addresses a topic that has thus far eluded the field.

Fifteen principles outlined as a guide for parents and teachers who want to share the pleasure of reading with deaf children.

"Language Learning in Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, 2nd Edition: Theory to Classroom Practice is the long-awaited revision of the only textbook on primary language instruction written with classroom teachers of deaf and hard-of-hearing children (TODs) in mind. It builds on the work of the previous version while providing the reader with access to the entire first version on a supplemental website. An important feature of this book is that it describes four real TODs and demonstrates application of concepts discussed to the DHH children on their caseloads. Up-to-date chapters on theory of language learning, assessment, and evidence-based practice replace removed chapters. Chapters on English and American Sign Language (ASL) structure and on the three major approaches (listening and spoken language, bilingual-bimodal instruction, and ASL instruction) are updated. The chapters on teaching vocabulary and morphosyntax, how to ask and answer questions, and writing language objectives for Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) are expanded DHH. Specific examples of real cases are incorporated throughout the book. Finally, after a theoretical base of information on language instruction, many of the chapter provide language teachers with specific examples of how to answer the question: "What should I do on Monday." It avoids promotion of one or another philosophy, presenting all and demonstrating the commonalities across classroom language instruction approaches for DHH children"--

As deaf and hard of hearing children are identified at an increasingly early age, professionals need to expand their knowledge about early intervention and education for these young children and their families. This scholarly text from the experts provides a solid foundation of research, key concepts, and practical suggestions. Essential reading for early childhood educators, education professionals, speech-language pathologists and students, this comprehensive resource fullyl prepares readers for successful partnerships with families and their deaf and hard of hearing chldren.

Humans’ development of literacy has been a recent focus of intense research from the reading, cognitive, and neuroscience fields. But for individuals who are deaf—who rely greatly on their visual skills for language and learning—the findings don’t necessarily apply, leaving theoretical and practical gaps in approaches to their education. Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals: Neurocognitive Measurement and Predictors narrows these gaps by introducing the VL2 Toolkit, a comprehensive test battery for assessing the academic skills and cognitive functioning of deaf persons who use sign language. Skills measured include executive functioning, memory, reading, visuospatial ability, writing fluency, math, and expressive and receptive language. Comprehensive data are provided for each, with discussion of validity and reliability issues as well as ethical and legal questions involved in the study. And background chapters explain how the Toolkit was compiled, describing the procedures of the study, its rationale, and salient characteristics of its participants. This notable book: Describes each Toolkit instrument and the psychometric properties it measures. Presents detailed findings on test measures and relationships between skills. Discusses issues and challenges relating to visual representations of English, including fingerspelling and lipreading. Features a factor analysis of the Toolkit measures to identify underlying cognitive structures in deaf learners. Reviews trends in American Sign Language assessment. Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals is an essential reference for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and other professionals working in the field of deafness and deaf education across in such areas as clinical child and school psychology, audiology, and linguistics.

This compelling collection advocates for an alternative view of deaf people's literacy, one that emphasizes recent shifts in Deaf cultural identity rather than a student's past educational context as determined by the dominant hearing society. Divided into two parts, the book opens with four chapters by leading scholars Tom Humphries, Claire Ramsey, Susan Burch, and volume editor Brenda Jo Brueggemann. These scholars use diverse disciplines to reveal how schools where deaf children are taught are the product of ideologies about teaching, about how deaf children learn, and about the relationship of ASL and English. Part Two features works by Elizabeth Engen and Trygg Engen; Tane Akamatsu and Ester Cole; Lillian Buffalo Tompkins; Sherman Wilcox and BoMee Corwin; and Kathleen M. Wood. The five chapters contributed by these noteworthy researchers offer various views on multicultural and bilingual literacy instruction for deaf students. Subjects range from a study of literacy in Norway, where Norwegian Sign Language recently became the first language of instruction for deaf pupils, to the difficulties faced by deaf immigrant and refugee children who confront institutional and cultural clashes. Other topics include the experiences of deaf adults who became bilingual in ASL and English, and the interaction of the pathological versus the cultural view of deafness. The final study examines literacy among Deaf college undergraduates as a way of determining how the current social institution of literacy translates for Deaf adults and how literacy can be extended to deaf people beyond the age of 20.

A significant number of d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) children and adolescents experience challenges in acquiring a functional level of English language and literacy skills in the United States (and elsewhere). To provide an understanding of this issue, this book explores the theoretical underpinnings and synthesizes major research findings. It also covers critical controversial areas such as the use of assistive hearing devices, language, and literacy assessments, and inclusion. Although the targeted population is children and adolescents who are d/Dhh, contributors found it necessary to apply our understanding of the development of English in other populations of struggling readers and writers such as children with language or literacy disabilities and those for whom English is not the home language. Collectively, this information should assist scholars in conducting further research and enable educators to develop general instructional guidelines and strategies to improve the language and literacy levels of d/Dhh students. It is clear that there is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept, but, rather, research and instruction should be differentiated to meet the needs of d/Dhh students. It is our hope that this book stimulates further theorizing and research and, most importantly, offers evidence- and reason-based practices for improving language and literacy abilities of d/Dhh students.