GUEST SPEAKER: Michele Neal, Office of Education Services, Resource Support Program
TOPIC: Literacy for Children with Hearing Loss: Nuts and Bolts
Michele joined us for a very interesting, informative discussion of literacy and language development. She began by discussing audiograms and knowing where your child stands. This includes knowing where they fall on the Auditory Learning Guide (Sound awareness, or phoneme, discourse, sentence, or word level). She then reviewed expressive language development over the infant and preschool years. She stressed that Auditory and Language Development are prescursory skills for reading. Michele then moved on to discuss reading.
Michele discussed the findings of the National Reading Panel, including 5 areas of focus required for successfully teaching children to read, numbered below.
1) Phonemic awareness
the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words
2) Phonics
phonic instruction helps children learn the relationships b/n letters and sounds, and leads to understanding of the systematic and predictable relationships b/n written and spoken lang (ie, when a vowel is followed by another, the first one says its name). Helps in word recognition, spelling and reading comprehension.
**Without phonemic awareness and phonics instruction, decoding of unfamiliar words is difficult, limiting vocab (must depend of sight words), fluency, and comprehension.**
3) Vocabulary
Refers to Oral, Aural and Print vocab.
** At the start of Kindergarten, the best predictor of reading achievement in grades 3 and up is ORAL vocab, (both receptive and expressive)
Studies of the effects of oral language weakness on reading growth were impressive, showing that a small difference in Kindergarten translates into a very significant difference later. A study evaluating the achievement gap strongly suggests that the gap between these groups expands seriously with time, and is difficult to overcome even with intervention later. This is due to several things, including:
To go from 8000 words known by the kindergartener to the 40,000 known (on average) at HS gradauation, children must learn 7 words a day (3000 per year from 3-12th grades)
IF kids can be brought to grade level in the 1st 3 yrs of school, they can generally stay at grade level thereafter.
4)Fluency
less attention required for decoding, and better vocab base leads to more attention focused on comprehension
5) Text comprehension
the process of extracting or constructing meaning (building new meanings and integrating old info) from words once they have been identified
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Know what your child can/can’t hear, their langage level, and their vocab level
Know of their reading program is explicit, systematic, and sequential
Advocate for additional services
READ, READ, READ
Resources were also provided and can be made available (call or email if you want some!)
Parents/Others Present:
Leslie Wolfe
Marty and Leigh Reeves
Arthur & Tracy Tastet
Jenny Ball
Loretta and Matthew Slozer
Pam Bensimhon
Chris & Crystal Rierson
Mary Compton
Diane Doak
Ann McNally
UNCG Auditory-Oral Birth-12 program students (at meeting/ babysitting, below): Stephanie Butner, Erika Likens, Doug Price, Amber Lindgren, Wendy Baber, Lindsey Knopp
Children Present:
**A big thank you to the UNCG Auditory-Oral Birth-12 program students!!**
Collin and Hannah Tastet
Angeleah Reeves
McKenna Slozer and her 4 sibs
Thanks to Lesley Wolfe for bringing refreshments for the parents and children. Chris and Crystal Rierson are signed up to bring snacks for the Febuary meeting.
NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, February 26, 2008. John and Joan Black will be discussing available technology for the hearing impaired
ANNOUNCEMENTS: AGBell Convention: Somethin' BIG is Brewing in Milwaukee, June 27-30, 2008
Pam Bensimhon & Crystal Rierson
Co-leaders, Triad HITCH-UP
www.triadhitchup.com
