Teachers, paraprofessionals, and parents recognize the importance of providing deaf and hard of hearing children with full access to the languages around them. Without full access, reading and academic achievement remain far below intellectual capabilities. This article describes the Continuum of Reading Activities, which provides strategies that…

Visual Phonics is a multisensory teaching tool that has the potential to improve reading outcomes. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine studies on Visual Phonics to provide a comprehensive understanding of the effects on code-related skills. Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria. The results demonstrate that Visual Phonics can…

Reading is one of the most significant academic skills and numerous students have difficulties with reading including students who are deaf and hard of hearing. An average student with hearing impairments graduates from a high school with a fourth-grade reading comprehension level that is alarmingly poor. Several reasons may cause this low reading…

This article describes how teaching deaf students to read has been challenging and contentious, yet, one crucial attribute to developing reading skills is early exposure to American Sign Language (ASL). ASL seemed to serve as a bridge to achieving English literacy and academic success partly because early use of ASL enables deaf students to…

Hearing loss adversely affects language and literacy development and reading difficulties of deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) students are well documented by a large body of research. Effective instructional strategies that employ evidence-based strategies to support the reading development of d/Dhh students are required. Therefore, the purpose of…

The aim of this study was to clarify whether fingerspelling provides a sophisticated mechanism that promotes the development of detailed orthographic knowledge for deaf individuals even in the absence of paralleling phonological knowledge. An intervention program comprised of various procedures chaining between fingerspelled sequences; their…

Design features of American Sign Language (ASL)-English bilingual storybook apps on the tablet computers, based on learning research, are intended to facilitate independent and interactive learning of English print literacy and of ASL skill among young learners. In 2013, the Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning…

Teaching a second language to students who are Deaf and hard-of-hearing is unique because language learning techniques often disrupt spoken/phonocentric models of bilingual language learning that require speech before learning to read and write. Balanced bilingual educational strategies in education of Deaf and hard-of-hearing students include…

About 15 percent of America's deaf and hard of hearing students are African American and about 25 percent are Hispanic/Latinix (Gallaudet Research Institute, 2011). This article documents a process that teachers who work with deaf or hard of hearing students can use to meet the diverse and individualized needs of their students while using…

Students with disabilities, like their economically disadvantaged counterparts, experience lower expectations and less demand for academic success from teachers. Students who experience both disabilities and social and economic disabilities may experience even less rigorous expectations from their teachers who experience only one condition or the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a technology-based intervention (LanguageLinks: Syntax Assessment and Intervention®; Laureate Learning Systems, Inc., 2013) to improve reading comprehension for d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) elementary students. The intervention was a self-paced, interactive program designed to…

In literature which discusses the Theory of Mind (ToM) of deaf children, the lens is usually focused on the child. Here, the lens is directed toward the practitioners and the potential they have to support the development of ToM. In considering a practice-focused approach, we report on the strategies used by five educators of five deaf children…

Vocabulary is a consistent predictor of reading achievement for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. DHH children tend to have a smaller vocabulary knowledge base than their hearing peers and require direct instruction in this area. There are no evidence-based vocabulary instruction strategies for this population. One reason for the lack of an…

Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) children frequently have delayed language; yet limited research exists on interventions to facilitate linguistic development in the classroom (Fung, Chow, & McBride-Chang, 2005). Dialogic reading is an evidence-based practice that has resulted in significantly improved language skills (Towson, Fettig, Fleury,…

The purpose of this intervention study was to examine the use of a metacognitive strategy--the Comprehension, Check, and Repair Strategy--on strategic reading behavior, nonstrategic reading behavior, and reading comprehension of students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). A multiple baseline design was used across 3 teacher-student dyads.…