Purpose: This study compares responses of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) who use spoken language with responses of children who have typical hearing on a repeated word association task to evaluate lexical-semantic organization. Method: This study included 109 participants in early kindergarten or who had completed first grade. The…

Better understanding of the mechanisms underlying early reading skills can lead to improved interventions. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine multivariate associations among reading, language, spoken phonological awareness, and fingerspelling abilities for three groups of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) beginning readers: those who…

Visual phonics, a system of 46 hand-shapes with equivalent symbols, when used together are called "cues." These cues couple with the 46 phoneme sounds of spoken English. Visual phonics was originally developed by a mother for her deaf son to aid in teaching speech and reading. This study was designed to compare students in two different…

This investigation aimed to explore the feasibility of implementing the strategic and interactive signing instruction (SISI) framework and its potential to enhance the signed composition skills of four deaf students in a first/second-grade classroom. SISI was adapted from the existing strategic and interactive writing instruction (SIWI) framework…

We examined the language and reading progress of 336 young DHH children in kindergarten, first and second grades. Trained assessors tested children's language, reading, and spoken and fingerspelled phonological awareness in the fall and spring of the school year. Children were divided into groups based on their auditory access and classroom…

Inquiry-based active learning in science is helpful to all students but especially to those who have a hearing loss. For many deaf or hard of hearing students, the English language may be their second language, with American Sign Language (ASL) being their primary language. Therefore, many of the accommodations for the deaf are similar to those…

A commentary on Williams's (2012) invited article on the use of adapted vocabulary learning interventions focuses on three areas: (a) Vocabulary interventions with storybook reading originally designed for hearing children can be adapted for deaf children. (b) Teachers are invited to reflect on how the read-aloud process in English differs from…

Many school systems mandate sight word mastery by their students, and this can be challenging for certain student populations. With a Professional Development School, college interns conducted an inquiry project with struggling first graders to learn required sight vocabulary. The inquiry project explored the use of American Sign Language to…

In the fall of 2008, the authors began team teaching in a bilingual American Sign Language (ASL)/English classroom. They faced the same challenge teachers everywhere face: a new year with new goals and a classroom of students with diverse learning needs. This article discusses how the authors address students' language needs in a bilingual ASL and…

This study investigated the ability of six first graders with moderate to severe hearing impairment to recall a story using four reading presentation conditions: (1) group reading with interaction, (2) group reading without interaction, (3) individual reading with interaction, and (4) individual reading without interaction. Four books (one book…