Improving Literacy Outcomes in Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Drew's Dad and I were finally able to attend Deaf Initiatives Navigating Your Child's Future presentation this past weekend. The presentation was supposed to take place back in March, but was postponed due to a snow storm.

One of the areas we have been concerned about is literacy. As the parent of a newly diagnosed child with hearing loss, it can be startling to learn that many deaf and hard of hearing individuals only reach a third to fourth grade reading level. I have learned that this is often because deaf or hard of hearing children are taught "whole word" reading, where they actually memorize the look of the word. Whereas, typical reading skills are developed by phonics, but required the ability to hear and say all 47 phenoms of the English language. With technology providing many options for proper amplification for our deaf or hard of hearing children, through cochlear implants and digital hearing aids, these outcomes will improve.

Karen Roudybush gave a wonderful presentation on "Bringing Literacy Home," which provided me with many activities and ideas on how to help establish a strong foundation for literacy. She shared with us that research demonstrates that the size of a child's vocabulary is a strong predictor of future reading skills, so it is important to develop a large vocabulary early on. Giving children rich language experiences throughout the day by telling and reading stories, describing the world around them and expanding on word choice (big, huge, giant, jumbo) are all ways to expand a child's vocabulary. She even gave us some activities that we can do to help expand our child's vocabulary:

• Write on several pieces of paper different words describing "something", for example: small, tiny, little, minute. Then have your child rank the different words in terms of which one is smaller than the other. To me, minute describes something very, very small, where as tiny would mean something a little bit bigger than minute. This expands on a child's vocabulary and gives them additional ways to describe something that is small.
• Grocery Shopping: She suggested that we always have a grocery list when shopping! (More work for me!) Hand the list to the child, complete with the word written out, and maybe a small sketch or drawing of the object. Then, have the child help you find the item in the store. This can be done even with very little children, and will help them learn to identify key grocery items, and expand their food vocabulary.
• Purchase small Dry Erase boards and place throughout the house. Write little notes on them each day for your children. Something like, "I love you!" or "School Today" will help children learn how to read (left to right, top to bottom) and will help them realize when letters are upside down and how letters are put together to form words and sentences.

She also gave several book selections that will help enhance vocabulary and literacy. There are many different types of books, so it is important to know what you want to work on when reading. For example, if you want to work with your child on sequencing of the days of the week, a book like Cookie's Week is excellent. She gave several selection idea. I know our family has some book shopping to do:

• For repetition: I Went Walking, Good Night Moon, Brown Bear, Brown Bear
• For Cumulative Sequence: The Napping House
• For Known Sequence: Cookie's Week, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Grouchy Ladybug

Kathy also suggested reading books that revolve around daily routines, like bedtime, books about the changing seasons, classic stories, like The Three Bears or The Three Little Pigs, and series books, like Curious George. (Kohl's Cares for Kids is an excellent program, and is currently promoting the Curious George series. It is a great opportunity to purchase the books and toys at a great price, while giving back to the community.)

Mooo! Baaa! Oink! Quack!

Working on animal names? Try this book:



We are really enjoying Mooo! Baaa! Oink! Quack! with Drew. Drew is fairly good with knowing his animal sounds; he can say a handful of them on demand. While we are continuing to work on the animal sounds, we are also encouraging Drew to name the animal based on the sound. Instead of saying, "What does a duck say?" and waiting for him to say, "Quack," we're saying, "What animal says 'quack, quack, quack'?" He isn't able to say any animal names as of yet, but we're working on it.

This book has been excellent for working on his expressive language, plus it incorporates fun pictures and has flaps to lift, which always help to keep Drew entertained while reading. We hope you enjoy it too!

Discover the Day

The Baby Einstein Discover the Day book is one of our favorites to read to Drew. There are times throughout the day where it is just not possible for Drew to wear his cochlear implants, like in the bathtub, therefore leaving him without any sound. As a result, picking up langague surrounding these situations is difficutlt. This book helps to develop Drew's language for such events.



We love reading the page all about bath time to Drew. We talk all about the bubbles in the tub and reinforce it with the bubble sound button. We talk about washing (wash, wash) your body and shampooing your hair. We'll even pretend to do these things to Drew while reading the book.



It's also fun to match up the symbols under the flaps in the book to the symbol on the sound board. My daughter loves to play the sounds as we read the book, and it helps children to hear the sound of the cat, bird or spring. One thing that can be confusing to children is that an object can have many different ways to make the same sound. I really think that it is a great idea to have the child hear how you would make the sound with your mouth versus how it sounds manufactured in the book. This helps to develop the child's auditory memory, and they will likely recognize the different sounds for the same object.



I never realized how much language Drew is missing out on during the times that he does not have his "ears" on, so it is nice to have books that can help enforce this important language.

Fiona Watt's Touchy Feely Books

That's Not My Bear! That's Not My Dinosaur! We love the "That's Not" series of books by Fiona Watt.






These books are excellent for introducing your child to textures. Soft, rough, scratchy, just to name a few. Texture is an interesting concept for children, and these books highlight them in a fun and entertaining way. I'll never forget the first time I read That's Not My Bear to Drew after his cochlear implants were activated. He strummed his fingernails across the rough tongue of the bear for what seemed like hours, just listening to the sound.

We are currently using these books to work with Drew on learning his body parts. Cognitively at his age, 17 months, he should be able to identify these parts in the book and on himself. Using the books, we can ask Drew to point to different parts of the body. Then, the textures that the books highlights, stating "That's Not My Bear" create interest around a specific part of the body.

We hope you enjoy the That's Not series of books with your children!

Karen Katz Books

Drew is a big fan of Karen Katz and her lift-the-flap book series. Drew's Dad and I also enjoy reading these books with both of our children.



This Baby's Box of Fun is filled with three of our favorite Karen Katz books, all of which we find very useful for common auditory objectives with infants and toddlers. This would include identifying basic commands, understanding the spaciality of body parts and general literacy principals.

Do you have a child that often will not sit still for an entire story? With the lift-the-flap books you can take the story wherever you child wants it to go. Is he interested in lifting the flaps or simply turning the pages? You can narrate everything your child is doing. With Drew we often find ourselves leaving the story to say, "Drew, you're lifting the page up, up, up. Oh, look, there is the baby's belly button. Now, can you put the page down?" These words have helped Drew to learn the difference between up and down, and have helped him understand basic commands, "lift the flap up" and "put the flap down."

We really enjoy using these books to work on the spatiality of body parts. We know that learning body parts is a cognitive skill Drew should be acquiring at this age (17 months). After reading the story on a particular page, we will cease with the story and ask Drew, "Where are the baby's eyes?" We will give Drew a few moments to respond. If he responds correctly we reward with lots of clapping and a high-five. If he does not respond correctly or at all, we will take his finger and point to the baby's eyes. All of these actions are done while auditorally enforcing what we are doing.

General principals of literacy can be achieved by asking the child to turn the page rather than lift the flap. Children will learn that you turn the page after you have completed reading the story on the current page.

We hope that you will enjoy reading these stories with your child. Please feel free to share other ways you have used Karen Katz books.

A Work in Progress

As the readership of Turn on My Ears! increases my email inbox has been expanding. Common questions include: What type of therapy is Drew participating in? How often does Drew attend therapy? What activities are you doing with Drew? How do you find time to be "Mom" and "therapist"? Some of these questions I will answer in future posts, but some questions have made me think of ways I can use the blog to help with therapy, both for Drew and for other children with hearing loss.

I've decided to start a Book of the Week club, to help describe the way we are using books as therapy for Drew. You will notice the addition of this section (and I've added a few of our favorites) on the right side bar. I will discuss different children's books we are working on with Drew and the specific activities we are doing in order to achieve specific results. I will add each book to the "Book of the Week" section with a brief description of how the book is helpful for developing listening and speech for a child with hearing loss. If you click on the book in the side bar, you will be taken to Amazon.com where you can review the book and purchase if you would like to do so.

I hope that this weekly addition, beginning this Sunday, will help generate comments where we can all share additional ideas or ways to use books in order to help our children learn to listen and talk! I hope this will turn into a wonderful forum for us to share therapy ideas through reading. Read with a child. It's the most important 20 minutes of your day.