Amy R. Lederberg

1
The Development of an Emergent Literacy
Curriculum for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

• Amy R. Lederberg
• Educational Psychology Special
  EducationGeorgia State University
• Presentation at IES Washington, DC
• June 2008

2
Three Year IES Development Grant Research Team

• Amy Lederberg, Educational Psychologist
• Susan Easterbrooks, Deaf Educator/Teacher
  Educator
• Carol Connor, Literacy Specialist, Speech
  Pathologist
• Elizabeth Miller, Teacher of the Deaf, 16 years
• Jessica Bergeron, Teacher of the Deaf, 5 years
• Paul Alberto, SS Design Consultant

3
Overview

• Year 1
• Developed framework
• Standardized assessments in fall and spring to
  establish baseline
• Single-subject study of phonics
• Year 2
• Year-long implementation of curriculum by
  research-teacher in small groups (pull-out)
• Replication of SS study of phonics
• SS study of rhyming

4
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

• Poor readers
• Graduate at 4th grade reading level (median)
• No specific curriculum for them except one based
  on whole language principles
• New generation of children with more access to
  sound
• Early identification (newborn screening)
• Early Intervention
• Cochlear implants and digital hearing aids

5
Year 1 Baseline

• Assessment of language, literacy, speech
  perception skills of 50 deaf children in
  self-contained classrooms in large metro area at
  beginning and end of the year
• Data confirmed children delayed in phonological
  awareness (especially rhyming), phonics, and
  vocabulary.
• 75 of deaf/hard of hearing children were able to
  identify spoken wordstarget population for our
  curriculum

6
Guiding Principles of Curriculum Development
Begin with research on what works for hearing
children
Adapt it to the special needs of deaf children
Individualize to meet the needs of particular
children
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Intervention

• One hour integrated lessons four days a week by
  research-teachers
• Phonics letter-sound correspondence
• Vocabulary
• Phonological Awareness segmentation, initial
  sound, rhyming, and blending
• Print Awareness
• Fluency
• Comprehension narrative understanding

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Phonics Day One

• Phoneme-grapheme correspondences are taught by
  making a semantic connection through stories,
  pictures and extended language activities.

• Planning for the Language Activity

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Phonics Day Two
Sounds are presented and practiced in isolation
in a meaningful vocabulary-enriched language
activity.
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Recall
Phonics Day Three

• Phonics concepts are
• reinforced through
• recall of the language
• activity and phonological
• awareness activities.

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Phonics Day Four
Students learn to combine learned phonemes to
make key words.

• Letter sound correspondence is reinforced
  through Phoneme Fun books on days 2 4.

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Year 1 Study 1

• Study 1 used the stories and key words from
  Childrens Early Intervention (CEI) for Speech
  Language Reading (Tade, 1994).
• Single case design to test the efficacy of
  phonics instruction using semantic association
  instructional strategy
• Multiple baseline across content
• 8 weeks long
• Three (5,6, 7 year olds) children at state
  school for the deaf (ASL in classroom)
• Two 4 year olds at oral private preschool
• All able to identify spoken words on the Early
  Speech Perception Test

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Phonics Dependent Variable

• What sound does this letter make?

• DV Number correct of phoneme-grapheme
  associations produced from 3 exemplars
• Baseline Phase Assessed 8 graphemes
• Intervention Phase (daily assessment) 3 trials
  of target phoneme and any previously taught
  phonemes until reached criterion (4 consecutive
  days at 100)
• Probes (weekly) the same as baseline
• Maintenance Probes probes continued to contain
  all graphemes

14
m

• 6 year old male from the State School for the
  Deaf, uses speech supported sign language to
  communicate bilateral hearing aids, severe
  sensorineural hearing loss

b
t
s
p
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Summary of Results- Study 1

• Baseline established children knew almost all
  (long) vowels prior to intervention occasional
  consonant.
• All children showed a strong functional relation
  for learning previously unknown correspondences
  (on average 5 graphemes)
• All unknown phoneme-grapheme correspondences at
  100 after an average of 4.5 sessions (range
  1.6-7.2)
• of overlapping data (POD) averaged across
  children equaled 28 for the consonants

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Study 2

• Same phonics instructional strategy embedded in
  hour/day integrated curriculum
• Five 4-year-olds at oral preschool, all with
  cochlear implants
• All able to identify spoken words on the Early
  Speech Perception Test
• Same assessments as study 1 but less frequently
  (Bi-weekly instructional assessment probes every
  two weeks)
• 6 week study focused on 6 phonemes (included
  vowels and consonants)

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• 4.5 year old female, unaided PTA110 (profound
  hearing loss), Cochlear implant

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Summary of Results- Study 2

• Replicated Study 1 findings
• All children reached 100 (3 out of 3) for
  unknown phoneme-grapheme correspondences after an
  average of 2.7 sessions (range 2 to 4).
• of overlapping data (POD) for all 5 children
  averaged to 24 for the consonants
• Incorporated assessment into fluency chart (after
  instruction)

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Rhyming

• Using Single Subject Design as a Guide to Lesson
  Development

Mr. Fox His Rhyming Box
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Rhyming

• Assessments indicated deaf children very poor at
  rhymingmore than half unable to identify rhymes
• Rhyming age-appropriate skill for 4-year-olds so
  cognitively should be able to acquire

21
Rhyming Design

• Planned an ABC Design
• A Baseline
• B Exposure to nursery rhymes, fingerplays, and
  rhyming books
• C Explicit teaching
• Multiple Baseline Across Participants

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Rhyming

• DV identify which of three pictured words rhymes
  with the target picture

23
Rhyming Baseline
A small group of two participants with cochlear
implants.
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Rhyming Intervention One

• Nursery Rhyme Exposure
• Students were engaged in nursery rhymes, songs
  and fingerplays and rhyming books on a daily
  basis with rhyming words pointed out by the
  teacher. Visual support was provided with
  pictures. Ex Listen, sky and eye rhyme.

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Rhyming Intervention One
Data Dates
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Rhyming Intervention Two

• A Baseline
• B Explicit instructions with visually-supported
  rhyming activities (principles used for other
  phonological awareness activities)

• Students were given multiple opportunities to
  work with rhyming picture pairs in various
  activities during which rhymes and rimes were
  pointed out with explicit language. Ex wig and
  pig rhyme. They have the same sounds at the
  end. wig ig, pig ig. Students were
  encouraged to repeat the rhymes. Wig pig,
  they rhyme.

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Rhyming Intervention Two
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Rhyming Intervention Three

• Families and Contrast with Auditory Emphasis
• Prior knowledge of go together was built upon
  with the idea that we can hear words that go
  together. Students were then given opportunities
  to work with rhyme families and pairs with a
  strong emphasis on listening. Contrast was used
  to teach the concept of rhyme through many of the
  activities.

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Rhyming Intervention Three
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Three more students in Interventions Two and
Three. Sue and Mary made significant progress in
the final intervention. Viki showed a slight
improvement but was not greater than chance.
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Rhyming Results

• Ended with a pilot study that guided intervention
• The final intervention phase was successful with
  four of the five participants each at a mean for
  the last three assessments above 90.
• An actual study using the last intervention is
  planned for the fall.

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Challenges for using SS designs

• Time for assessment vs. time for intervention
• Integrated curriculum makes it difficult to
  precisely define IV