Literacy and Deaf Children

Free Play

Each section of the free play area had a poster with a red light (i.e., red circle) on one side and a green light on the other side hung on a hook in the area. Cathy would turn the lights to green prior to free play in any area where the children were allowed to play. These areas generally included the block area, toy shelves, kitchen area, doll area, and gross motor toys section. The book area was also an open area for free play. To inform the children in the oral class of the end of free play, Cathy would set a timer and tell the children to listen for it. For the total communication class, Cathy would sign, “Time to clean up” while also verbally saying it, making certain at least one or two of the children were attending. The children would clean up the various play areas and then prepare for group routines or, after the second play period of the day, for art or music.

Routines

Daily routines consisted of a series of activities: (a) listening check, (b) Happy Faces chart, (c) sound practice, (d) calendar, (e) Draw-a-person, and (f) Share Bag. The children would sit in chairs (of their choice) in a semicircle around Cathy, facing a bulletin board. Cathy’s focus on routines helped the children to adjust to and participate in everyday school events. These routines aided the children in learning about order and progression in events, an important concept for young children to understand. Thus, routines, albeit sometimes tedious or uninteresting to the children, may have provided beneficial experiences and habits that the children may have lacked prior to school.

Listening Check

For the listening check, Cathy would use a wooden puzzle of a hand with separate pieces for each finger. She had written the numbers one through five on the fingers, one number per finger. She would administer the listening check to each child individually. First, she would ask the child to find a numbered finger (e.g., “Where is number one?”). While the child held the finger to his/her ear, Cathy would cover her mouth with her hand and make one of five sounds (e.g, “Sssss”). When the child heard the sound, he/she would place the puzzle piece in the puzzle frame. This activity was a part of the class routines for the first half of the year and then dropped from the schedule.

The oral class had a short routine that was not used with the total communication class. Each afternoon, after the listening check, Cathy would sing "Where is Thumbkin?" with the children, replacing the word Thumbkin with a child’s name.

Happy Faces Chart

The next part of the routines was the spelling of the children’s names and the Happy Faces chart. The Happy Faces chart listed several behaviors the children were expected to exhibit each day: wear hearing aids, be good listeners, be good helpers, be good friends, bring their notebooks (from home and with notes from their parents to Cathy), and work with Laura, the speech pathologist. Pictures representing these behaviors were posted on the chart next to the words. To start this activity, Cathy would have a child choose his/her name from two name books (Cathy’s term for these items: books made of construction paper, six inches by nine inches, with a child’s name on the outside and a picture of the child on the inside). After the child chose a book, Cathy would open it and place it over a column on the Happy Faces chart. In the latter part of the year, before opening the book, Cathy would ask each child to point to specific letters in his/her name. She would then ask the child to spell his/her name as she wrote it on the chart. Cathy ended this activity by drawing happy faces under the child’s name for behaviors that had been observed prior to routines.

Sound Practice

Another part of the routines that continued for most of the year was the sound practice. Cathy would say two sounds and do two actions at the same time (e.g., “Baa-baa boo” might be accompanied by tapping twice on one’s knees and then once on one’s head) and have the children, first as a group and then individually, repeat the pattern, both with sound and actions. On a day when a new parent was visiting, Cathy explained the purpose of this activity: “It’s to teach the children to recognize patterns and to understand sequencing.” Some of the children, however, never seemed to grasp that this was the objective of the activity—even towards the end of the year, although they showed in many other ways that they understood sequence, they could not get the sequence of the patterns.

Calendar

Calendar work also emphasized sequencing. For the first month, Cathy represented the days on the calendar with alternating apples and suns. She would have the children tell if the next day on the calendar should be an apple or a sun. As the year went on, apples and suns were replaced with colors, first two colors and then a three-color pattern. Numbers also were added to the calendar. The children, as with the sound practice, did not quite understand why Cathy wanted them to tell what the next color should be. They counted the numbers without difficulty and seemed to understand the sequencing involved in this activity, but most of them, at times, responded to Cathy’s queries about “Which color is next?” with the wrong response.

Draw-a-person

The Draw-a-person activity was one that Cathy began on the first day of school and continued until the middle of January. For the first month of school, Cathy started the activity by writing a child’s name on the chalkboard. On September 22nd, she added the words “[Child’s name] is here.” After writing this, Cathy would draw the outline of a child’s body and certain body parts, leaving out other features such as an eye or a hand. Cathy would ask the child she had drawn, “What do we need?” and the child was expected to name the missing body parts with Cathy aiding in giving the correct response (e.g., if the child pointed to his/her eye, Cathy would have them say or sign, depending on their primary mode of communication, “another eye”). When the child had finished labeling his/her body parts, Cathy would direct the attention of all the children to the child’s clothing and would ask about the colors she needed for the picture. Cathy would then permit the child chosen for the picture to color his/her clothing with colored chalk. The other children throughout this activity were expected to sit and watch Cathy and the child being drawn. They were not permitted to talk or participate in the activity except after Cathy wrote the words “[Child’s name] is here.” If the children showed interest, she would let them read the sentence. If they tried to get actively involved in any other way, Cathy would remind them that today was not their turn. The entire activity lasted approximately five minutes and the children seemed to accept it as part of their schooling.

On January 16th, Cathy replaced the Draw-a-person activity with the dressing of two paper dolls. She posted two large paper dolls (a boy and a girl) on the bulletin board, each wearing only underwear. She would display paper clothing for the dolls and the children would tell what each doll needed that day. The children would come up individually and, after deciding which doll to dress, tell Cathy (in sign, voice, or by pointing) which item of clothing to clip onto the doll. As with the Draw-a-person activity, only one child would participate at a time and the others were expected to wait quietly for their turns. Every month after that, Cathy replaced the activity with a new one.

For February, the words “Where is it?” were written on the top of the bulletin board. Under these words, Cathy posted a picture of a heart and placed directional words written on cards around the heart: top and over at the top center portion of the bulletin board, under and bottom centered below the picture, by on the left side of the heart, behind in back of the heart, in front on the right bottom portion of the heart, and on directly on top of the heart. At the bottom of the bulletin board, below the heart and the word cards were two pictures, one of a boy (on the right side of the bulletin board) and the other of a girl (on the left side of the bulletin board). Cathy started the activity by pointing to the words as she read them and giving an individual child directions to follow, such as “Put the flower under the girl.” The activity changed only slightly in the beginning of March—the pictures of the boy and girl were replaced with pictures of a bird and butterfly.

On March 8th, a new activity was introduced: “How tall is it?” Cathy had posted the words 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the bulletin board. She started the activity as she had the “Where is it?” activity; that is, she pointed to the words as she read “How tall is it? First, second, third, fourth.” She would lay four paper flowers of varying heights on the table and have the children come up individually and point to the shortest flower, then the next tallest, and so on. This activity continued until May.

The final activity of the year was a changing bulletin board. Cathy placed a farm scene on the bulletin board and each day she changed several aspects of the scene. For example, she might have a cat climbing a tree one day and the next day the cat might be sitting on the top branch of the tree. The children would participate by again coming up individually and telling Cathy (in sign, voice, or by pointing) what had been changed in the picture (i.e., a response to “What is new? What do you see?”).

The purpose of the above activities remained constant throughout the year. For all the activities, the main goal was language or vocabulary development, usually around a specific theme (e.g., body parts, items of clothing, directional words, size relationships, farm unit).

Share Bag

Share Bag time was a variation on the traditional kindergarten routine of Show and Tell. Each day a different child brought back the Share bag (a large cloth bag with a tie-string on top) with some item from home (often a favorite toy). Cathy would let the children feel the bag and try to guess what was inside. Later in the year, she started this activity by having a child hide the Share bag and the child who brought it to school that day would ask the child who hid it where it was. Cathy would help the child who hid it respond orally or in sign (e.g., “It’s in the bookshelf”) and the child who brought it to school would then try to find it. After the children made guesses about its contents, Cathy would open the bag and remove its contents. Each child, after repeating “Let me see” or “Let me try,” would have a chance to play with the toy or look at the item for a minute or two.

Music

During my year at the site, I observed music lessons only in the oral class. Music did not seem to be part of the program for the total communication class.

Every Tuesday afternoon, at 1:15, the children had music with two first grade oral hearing-impaired classes. All the children would gather together in one of the classrooms and each month a different teacher would lead the music instruction. Usually, the children would spend fifteen minutes singing and acting out songs related to a specific theme (often the district’s theme of the month). For example, in December, the music lessons centered on songs about snow, Christmas, and winter.

On Monday afternoons, Cathy had music with just her class. As with the group lessons on Tuesdays, the focus of these activities related to the district unit of the month. Only once during the period of observation were musical instruments used.

Art

Art activities in both classes usually started as structured activities. Cathy’s goals for art activities were related to either the unit of the month, specific language and/or vocabulary goals, or specific fine motor skills.

Cathy often provided models for the children of the expected products of their art endeavors. These models usually were very specific (e.g., a snowman for a winter scene). In addition, the children were often told to keep working until their papers were completely covered. They also were instructed to create work that was not messy. The children could add their own touches to their products, but only after they had met Cathy’s goals and expectations. However, the children’s desires and needs to experiment with drawing and writing did not appear to be hampered by the structured activities. They were less willing to take risks during the art activities than they were when working in my notebook, but they still found ways to express themselves in their artwork. This may have been due to the fact that, although Cathy demanded certain specific products, she did not stop or interrupt the children’s creative expressions and explorations.

From November through the end of the year, Cathy also used art activities as a follow-up to stories, especially fairy tales. For example, on November 13th, Cathy read “The Gingerbread Man” to the children. The art activity for that day was the creation of clay gingerbread men. This was followed the next day with the coloring (with markers) of paper gingerbread men. Several days later, the children made gingerbread houses by gluing graham crackers, marshmallows, and candy on milk cartons, using frosting as glue.

Snack Time

Snack treats were supplied by parents. Every two or three weeks a different child would take home the snack basket and parents would fill it with nutritious snacks, usually chosen from an approved list sent home by Cathy. These snacks included fruit or crackers and juice or milk. The juice was supplied by Cathy or her aide, Eileen, out of their own funds, and the milk was provided by the school. Eileen would lead the snack activity while Cathy spent the time responding to notes from the parents in the spiral-bound notebooks the children brought to school each day. Eileen would begin the snack routine by asking each child, in turn, what they wanted. The children were expected to respond, orally or in sign, with “Cracker” or “Juice” or a similar request for food or beverage. As Eileen served the children crackers, they would count the number of crackers with her.

For the second half of the year, Cathy posted a snack helper chart over the sink and each day a different child would take over the role of teacher. This job involved asking the other children what they wanted and then assisting in passing out the food.

Recess

Recess occurred every day for half an hour. Since the area where the site was located never has snow, rarely has rain, and usually has mild temperatures except in the summers, weather conditions did not prevent the children from having an outdoor recess period. For the first few months of the school year, Cathy took the children to recess on the small playground when no other classes were there, but, as the children became better adjusted to school and to peers, she integrated the children, particularly the oral children, into a recess period with a kindergarten class of hearing children. The children played on different areas of the playground and on different pieces of equipment with varying levels of energy from day to day. They usually played cooperatively with their hearing-impaired and hearing peers.

Book Time

Book time lasted from fifteen to thirty minutes. During this time the children could choose to read any book they wanted. Cathy also allowed them to write in my notebook if they so desired. This was, moreover, a time when Cathy and Eileen would interact with the children as they engaged in reading. Both Cathy and Eileen would sit with a child and talk about the books they were reading, usually labeling pictures or asking the children to do so. On some occasions, often depending on the book the child had chosen, they would tell a story to the child as they looked through the book.

In addition to the daily free-choice book time, Cathy began structured story-telling activities at the start of November. These story experiences ordinarily involved the telling or reading of fairy tales; however, books related to monthly units and field trips also were included in the curriculum. Cathy frequently followed these experiences with additional activities related to the story or book, such as art activities and dramatizations.

Occasional Activities

Besides the daily schedule of activities, Cathy provided other experiences for the children at various times during the school year. These activities included: (a) structured language lessons, (b) filmstrips, and (c) assessments.

Structured Language Lessons

For the first two months of school, Cathy provided the children with activities that had specific language goals. For example, to aid in learning the names of body parts, Cathy and the children bathed a doll and talked about the body parts as they washed the doll. To teach the children the concepts of sweet and sour, Cathy had them make popsicles while tasting unsweetened lemon juice and apple juice as they prepared the popsicles. As still another example, Cathy had the children prepare fruit salad as they practiced learning the names of different fruits.

By the end of October, Cathy followed hands-on language experiences with class experience charts. After a class trip or activity, Cathy would write a story with the children about the experience. She would then involve the children in reading the story by having them read with her as a group or having one child read the story or parts of it individually.

Not all class experiences were followed with experience charts. In fact, only sixteen of the activities either class experienced during the year were used for chart stories. The reason for this lack of follow-up was unclear—Cathy expressed concern about the children’s language learning during activities (see excerpt below), yet she seemed to feel obligated to adhere to the class schedule and experience stories were not a part of that schedule.

Film Strips

Beginning in September, Cathy occasionally supplemented her lessons with related filmstrips. These filmstrips varied from well-captioned and illustrated supports for Cathy’s goals to outdated and poorly made learning aids. Cathy would sit in front of the children while Eileen operated the projector for the filmstrips. As she read the captions, Cathy would simultaneously sign and use voice for the total communication class and, for both classes, would simplify or elaborate on the captions as necessary to enhance the children’s learning from the filmstrips. On some occasions the activity was passive for the children, but, more often, Cathy would try to involve them in reading the captions or discuss with them the content of the filmstrip.

Assessments

Assessments of the children's learning occurred during specific times of the year. The most common of these activities were combination auditory training lessons and assessments. Cathy would work individually with the children on recognizing sounds (mostly environmental sounds) using a tape accompanying a pre-packaged set of pictures. For example, Cathy might lay three pictures on the table, a fire engine, a telephone, and a man, and ask the child what each picture was. She would then play a segment of the tape that represented one of the pictures (e.g., a fire siren, a phone ringing, or a child saying “Bye dada”) and ask the child to point to the picture for the sound.