The link between vocabulary and later literacy is well documented in the research base. One way children gain vocabulary is through incidental learning. Deaf or hard-of-hearing children (D/HH) often struggle with incidental learning and require vocabulary intervention to increase their lexicon. An effective vocabulary intervention is storybook…

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a new preschool early literacy intervention created specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children with functional hearing. Teachers implemented "Foundations for Literacy" with 25 DHH children in 2 schools (intervention group). One school used only spoken language, and the other used…

The goal of this study was to explore the development of spoken phonological awareness for deaf and hard-of-hearing children (DHH) with functional hearing (i.e., the ability to access spoken language through hearing). Teachers explicitly taught five preschoolers the phonological awareness skills of syllable segmentation, initial phoneme isolation,…

We examined acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondences by 4 deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers using instruction from a curriculum designed specifically for this population supplemented by Visual Phonics. Learning was documented through a multiple baseline across content design as well as descriptive analyses. Preschoolers who used sign…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the frequent use of a targeted, computer software grammar instruction program, used as an individualized classroom activity, would influence the comprehension of morphosyntax structures (determiners, tense, and complementizers) in deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) participants who use American Sign Language…

Reading fluency in deaf children whose primary mode of communication is visual, whether English-like or American Sign Language, is difficult to measure since most measures of fluency require a child to read aloud. This article opens the discussion of a new construct, namely, signed reading fluency (i.e., rendering of printed text in a visually…

In 2000, the 11th Circuit Court provided the largest single award in special education history to date, approximately $2.5 million, to two teenage students who were deaf. The students were judged to have been denied a free, appropriate public education (FAPE), having spent their academic careers in generic special education classes for students…