1. Dr. Susan Easterbrooks Professor, GSU Dr. Nanci Scheetz Professor, VSU
10 Things You Should Know about Phonemic Awareness and Phonics for Student with Hearing Loss
Dr. Susan Easterbrooks
Professor, GSU Dr. Nanci Scheetz
Professor, VSU

2. What do you get if you take the /d/ off dish and add a /f/ ?
I. Vocabulary and grammar weaknesses will influence phonemic awareness and phonics acquisition in children with hearing loss.
Children who hear are blending and segmenting words they know; children who have hearing difficulties are not.
Dif? What’s a dif?
What do you get if you take the /d/ off dish and add a /f/ ?

3. Do you remember the next slide. It is from the Vocabulary presentation
Do you remember the next slide? It is from the Vocabulary presentation. Children with hearing loss miss the bottom two layers.
Be sure to teach language and concepts before you ask students to manipulate sounds in the words.

4. grammar that represent the ideas
Labels
Students with hearing loss
struggle with the bottom
two sections of the
pyramid. They have
a concept and
language
problem
rather
than a
reading
problem.
Ability to read
the words and
make sense
Do you remember this
pyramid from the language
presentation?
Words and
grammar that represent the ideas
World Knowledge
Ideas about the world

5. II. Many children with hearing loss can learn phonemic awareness and phonics
Hearing children who are good readers have good phonological awareness skills
(National Reading Panel Report, 2000)
This is true as well for some children with a hearing loss.
(Dyer, MacSweeney, Szczerbinski, Green, & Campbell, 2003; Harris & Moreno, 2004; LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert,2003)
The purpose of phonemic awareness and phonics activities is to build an internal phonological (sound) representation of the grapheme representing a sound (f= fish, phone, cough)

6. Auditory: Listening to the sounds (internal auditory code)
III. There are at least two primary modes through which children with hearing loss can develop an internal representation system for phonemic-graphemic relationships.
Auditory: Listening to the sounds
(internal auditory code)
Visual: Looking at the sounds
(internal visual code)

7. IV. When teaching through the auditory mode, teachers should pay careful attention to the sounds that are available to the child.
Listen to the sound sample below.
This represents what a child with a hearing loss in the middle frequencies might hear.
The problem is not loudness, but clarity.
You need to know what sounds the child can discriminate before you ask him to discriminate them.

8. In order to be able to benefit from auditory approaches to phonemic awareness and phonics, a student must also be ability to identify word patterns.
wha-WHA-wha

9. Successful development of phonemic awareness and phonics through listening depends upon two key elements:
You MUST make sure the student is wearing the hearing aid, and that the hearing aid is working.
You MUST collaborate with the teacher of the deaf, who can tell you what sounds a child can and cannot hear.
When you know what sounds a child can and cannot hear, you can make meaningful adaptations to your phonemic awareness and phonics lessons.
pig
big
dig

10. Use the visual modality
BUT...
How can deaf children acquire a phonological system when they have restricted knowledge of spoken language due to hearing loss?
(Stewart & Clarke, 2003)
Based on spoken language.
Many people are asking (and from their reading) How can deaf children acquire a phonological system when they have restricted knowledge of spoken language due to hearing loss?
Step back and think about why this question is even important…
Use the visual modality

11. V. When teaching through the visual mode, teachers should pair the visual strategy carefully with the needs of the student.
Remember…we are trying to develop an “internal phonological representation of the grapheme representing the phoneme.”
In order to do this, we must choose a visual strategy appropriate for the student. ph
/f/

12. VI. One visual alternative is Cued Speech.
Cued Speech is a visual communication system that uses 8 handshapes and 4 locations to represent the phoneme stream.
When combined with lip movements, it helps
make the phoneme stream understandable to individuals with hearing loss.
see examples on next slide

13. Consonant Handshapes /zh, d, p/ /TH, k, v, z/ /h, r, s/ /b, wh, n/ big
          
           
           
             
big
pig
/zh, d, p/
/TH, k, v, z/
/h, r, s/
/b, wh, n/
   
                  
           
              
             
/m, f, t/
/w, l, sh/
/j, g, th/
/ch, y, ng/

14. VII. A second visual alternative is Visual Phonics.
Visual phonics is…
…a multisensory approach, using tactile, kinesthetic, visual, and auditory feedback to improve reading, writing, and speech skills in deaf students and other children and adults who do not learn readily from traditional reading approaches.

15. e d

16. VIII. A third visual alternative involves structural analysis and color coding.
Color coding systems usually have one color to represent vowels, one for voiced consonants, and one for unvoiced consonants.
Other systems can get quite complex.
All labial consonants are in this color: Bb, Pp, Ff. 3.  All nasal labial continuant consonants are in this color: Mm, Nn. 4.  All palatal consonants are in this color: Gg, Kk, Xx.
ETC.

17. Structural analysis systems ask children to learn to decode based on syllable patterns.
pon der un der
won der thun der

18. IX. No matter which system you choose, you must STICK WITH THAT SYSTEM OVER TIME.
Phonemic awareness and phonics skills do not develop in one year with one teacher; they develop over multiple years.
Choose one system and stay with it.
This means that you must collaborate with receiving teachers. Teachers P-4 must agree upon one system and stay with it. Systems may differ between children, but they should NOT differ across years. p

19. X. Some available phonics curriculums have been used successfully with DHH students who are learning through the auditory pathway.
Children’s Early Intervention for Speech, Language, and Literacy (
Lindamood Bell (
A group of researchers at Georgia State University is designing a literacy curriculum for preschool deaf children.
(For more information, contact

20. 10 Things you should know about phonemic awareness and phonics.
Vocabulary and grammar weaknesses will influence phonemic awareness and phonics acquisition in children with hearing loss.
II. Many children with hearing loss can learn phonemic awareness and phonics.
III. There are at least two primary modes through which children with hearing loss can develop an internal representation system for phonemic-graphemic relationships.
IV. When teaching through the auditory mode, teachers should pay careful attention to the sounds that are available to the child.
V. When teaching through the visual mode, teachers should pair the visual strategy carefully with the needs of the student.

21. VI. One visual alternative is Cued Speech.
VII. A second visual alternative is Visual Phonics.
VIII. A third visual alternative involves structural analysis and color coding.
IX. No matter which system you choose, you must STICK WITH THAT SYSTEM OVER TIME.
X. Some available phonics curriculums have been used successfully with DHH students who are learning through the auditory pathway.