Teaching Deaf Children to Read and Spell

I am often asked about teaching deaf learners and thought a blog would be helpful.

Research indicates that the best way to teach the foundations of reading and spelling is via systematic, synthetic phonics taught in the context of a subject rich and language rich curriculum. Written English is an alphabetic code where there is a relationship between the sounds in spoken words and the letters and letter combinations that represent them in written words. We explicitly teach the code to children alongside the skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation, which enable them to use and manage this code. Phonics is not a method of teaching reading and spelling; it is the essence of written language. Indeed, we might describe it as the curriculum itself. It is crucial that we do everything we can to make it accessible to all our learners.

However, this is problematic if a child is not able to easily access all the sounds because they have a hearing loss. So, can deaf children access phonics to learn to read and spell? The answer is yes, but instruction needs to be carefully planned to meet their individual needs.

I am based in the UK and here we are fortunate that school-aged children with a hearing loss are supported by a Teacher of the Deaf (ToD). For some children this is a teaching role and for others advisory, but they can provide invaluable information. Accessing an audiologist’s report that includes the child’s audiogram is very helpful. This potentially indicates the specific sound or sounds that are indistinct or absent for the child (when aided). With this information we can deliberately spend more time on these sounds as we come across them when working on the programme.

You might also consider introducing a visual cueing system such as Cued Articulation (Jane Passy) in relation to these sounds. Cued Articulation is a system of signs that relate to the individual phonemes in English and can be used to ‘mark’ the position of those indistinct or absent sounds. It also looks at mouth and tongue positions to assist articulation. I wouldn’t recommend using this for every sound, just selectively where appropriate.

At this point I perhaps need to talk about articulation. Although (anecdotally) I find phonics often improves articulation for children with hearing loss, it is not the purpose of the instruction. We need to recognise that a child’s articulation of an individual sound may not be precise, but they may be consistent in their inaccuracies. If this is the case, I accept their pronunciation of the sound as appropriate for them and don’t push them too much. If their approximation of a sound enables them to decode and encode then they can use them functionally and effectively to read and spell.

I find it useful to use lots of pictures during instruction to instantly confirm to the child whether they have accurately decoded a word or phrase (this gets tricky at sentence level because it’s hard to find matching pictures). Let’s look at an example.

·       You ask the child to read the word ‘dog’ presented on a card. Alongside this, place a picture of a dog face-down next to the word card (the picture must not be visible when the child is decoding the word).

·       The child decodes and arrives at the word ‘dug’.

·       The child then turns over the card and their error is apparent to them because the picture is surprising.

·       Talk through the specific error (/o/ /u/ confusion) and support them to decode, employing Cued Articulation to mark the sound that is tricky for the child.

Here are a few more general tips, which I find particularly helpful:

·       Positioning Sit opposite the child so they can see your mouth shape as you say sounds, model blending or error correct. They are also better able to lip read.

·       Visual Prompt Tap your chin as a subtle prompt for the child to look at you, so they have the opportunity to observe the shape of your mouth as you say the sounds.

·       Pointing I can’t stress enough the importance of physically pointing to sound-spellings (graphemes) at the same time as saying the sounds in words during various instructional tasks. Initially model this for the child, making sure the sounds and sound-spellings match and are in perfect sync. In time the child will imitate this, supporting their blending and decoding. This is extra important for deaf pupils as it references where sounds occur if they are absent or indistinct.

Children with a hearing loss tend to pick up vocabulary at a slower rate than peers and general language acquisition is often delayed. When working on phonics also take time to work on the meaning of any words that the child does not know the meaning of when reading. If you can sign then this will be an enormous help for the child. Working on vocabulary will support reading comprehension. Working on sentence building to reinforce syntax can also be of great benefit.

The National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) has produced a guide to teaching phonics which you might find useful. It is available to download free of charge: https://www.ndcs.org.uk/documents-and-resources/teaching-phonics-to-deaf-children-guidance-for-teachers/

Thanks to Discover Inclusion for the illustration of a child with a cochlear implant