Week 6 Post

1.) Several approaches and suggestions were mentioned by the authors, however challenges continue to impact educating students who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing. In thinking of your classroom, what components of reading and writing do you feel are important to teach and how will you teach them?

-In thinking of my future classroom I believe I will use a variety of reading and writing strategies with my students to keep the students motivated and observe what works best with my d/Deaf and hard of hearing students. I believe that all students should be exposed to all components of reading and writing to fully grasp these content areas. The components of literacy include: phonemic awareness/phonic strategies, alphabetics, vocabulary, text comprehension, fluency, and motivation (keeping the students engaged).The two reading strategies I decided to begin with were using graphic/ semantic organizers and pair and share. Graphic organizers including; cause and effect charts, storyboards, chain of events, and Venn-diagrams. These organizers allow the students to organize their thoughts on paper as they read. These organizers help students to understand relationships and concepts in the story. d/Deaf and hard of hearing students would benefit from this strategy because it is very visual and breaks down main ideas so that they can better understand the story. Pair and share allows students to pair up with a classmate and discuss reading comprehension questions provided by the classroom teacher. As we have discussed in several of our previous classes d/Deaf and hard of hearing students tend to struggle being social with their hearing peers. This would challenge them to discuss their thoughts and opinions and compare and contrast with their classmates by socializing whether that be using voice or sign and the interpreter. I’m interested to see what other strategies I will find beneficial when working with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students in my future classroom.