Helping+Students+Who+Are+Deaf+or+Hard+of+Hearing+Succeed

By: Caitlin Klipp

This article discusses some of the challenges that students who are deaf or have partial hearing loss face. It also gives advice for ways you can address some of the difficulties so that a student with this disability is not missing out on information or not given the proper attention to fully learn and understand the information.

Students with hearing loss are already at a disadvantage early on due to difficulties with communication. Students that have hearing loss are faced with language, vocabulary, and literacy delays. They experience gaps in knowledge due to language barriers. They receive inadequate knowledge and use of learning strategies. Students seem to have deficits in their social skills. They have a high reliance on their assistive technology.

This article describes many strategies that you can use to ensure you are assisting your student’s needs. By incorporating pre teaching techniques, making sure the students enjoy the subject matter, checking for engagement, linking it to their prior knowledge, modeling, the material has purpose and through direct instruction. Some ways to make sure students that are hard of hearing have a way of visualizing the information it is good to provide them with graphic organizers, provide conceptually related books, create a blog, and include virtual experiences with captioning.

Teachers need to be aware of a deaf students social interactions, because of their disability many times they lack the social skills due to lack of ability to communicate. Some strategies to bring to the classroom to aid in this is to teach the deaf or hard of hearing student interaction skills, teach the students simple sign language, teach the hearing students about hearing loss, provide a classroom that promotes interaction and communication.

Things teachers need to be aware of in the classroom are simple things that you need to adjust to best aide the hard of hearing or deaf student. Such as face the students when speaking, make sure there is adequate lighting, reduce background noise, use routines and have a visual schedule, and when possibly provide visual supplements. If a student has an interpreter, remember to continue to talk to the student, not to the interpreter. Also, to help with the note taking either provides notes for the student or pairs the student up with a classmate that can share their notes.

Assessment for students who are deaf or hard of hearing can still perform their skills in PE and are able to take written tests. They may need to be taken aside or talked to separately to make sure there is understanding in directions and performance. Especially in PE when planning a lesson I have to be aware of the conditions of the environment and my positioning when talking to my students to make sure that my student who is hard of hearing would be able to still receive the same information from me that a hearing student would get.

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Luckner, J. L., Slike, S. B., & Johnson, H. (2012). Helping Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing Succeed.// Teaching Exceptional Children //, // 44 //(4), 58-67.