10 Things You Should Know about Phonemic Awareness

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

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/ ?

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.

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

II. Many children with hearing loss can learn can 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, Mac. Sweeney, Szczerbinski, Green, & Campbell, 2003; Harris & Moreno, 2004; La. Sasso, 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) grapheme representing a sound

III. There 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 Auditory: (internal auditory code) Visual: Looking at the sounds Visual: (internal visual code)

IV. When teaching through the auditory mode, 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.

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-WHAwha

• 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, aid and that the hearing aid is working. – You MUST collaborate with the teacher of the deaf, who can tell collaborate 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 adaptations phonics lessons. pig big dig

How can deaf children acquire a phonological system when they have restricted knowledge of spoken language due to hearing loss? (Stewart & Clarke, 2003)

V. When teaching through the visual mode, teachers should pair the visual strategy carefully with the needs of the student. ph /f/ 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.

VI. One visual alternative is Cued Speech is a visual communication system Speech 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 understandable individuals with hearing loss.

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

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. http: clerccenter. gallaudet. edu/Kids. World. Deaf. Net/e-docs/Keys/see. html

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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.

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

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

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 (www. slosson. com) Lindamood Bell (http: //www. lblp. com/programs/lips. html) A group of researchers at Georgia State University is designing a literacy curriculum for preschool deaf children. (For more information, contact seasterbrooks@gsu. edu. )

10 Things you should know about phonemic awareness and phonics. I. 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. can III. There 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 auditory mode 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.

• 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.