I hope that some parents as have some deaf baby / kids can tell me how they teach deaf baby to read?
Bertha
Hi Bertha!
I don’t have any experience teaching deaf children to read but I think this is a great idea for your child and I’m sure with consistency and determination you can do it. It seems like if you use LR and you child sees the word matched up with the photo many times over a period of time, he/she will remember the word. It helps to hear the word, but you certainly don’t have to hear the word to remember the word, seeing it is what counts and knowing what it means is what counts.
You will definitely succeed and I can’t wait to hear about how it goes!
Lucy
Bertha,
Hello! I don’t have a baby who is deaf either, so I can’t give you firsthand experience. I am a speech-language pathologist and also know sign language (ASL). Do you know sign language? I believe signing while your baby sees the word or picture would be beneficial. Also since your baby can’t hear the word being spoken, it might be good to say the word yourself (while signing). This way your baby will see your lips moving, which adds more visual clues for your baby to go by. Another idea would be to have your baby touch your throat and mouth to feel how you say words.
English sounds are grouped in pairs by the placement of your articulators in the mouth. Articulators are just your lips, teeth, tongue, the ridge behind your teeth called the alveolar ridge, and palate. So these two sounds are made different by being voiced or voiceless. For example, feel how you make a ‘p’ sound and a ‘b’ sound with your lips. They are done the exact same way! Now feel your throat (larynx) when you make the two sounds and you will feel your voice on (voiced) for the ‘b’ or off (voiceless) for the ‘p’. (Just make sure you aren’t adding a vowel to the end of the sound like ‘buh’ or ‘puh’ when you say the letters…‘p’ should just be a puff of air.)
So by having your baby feel your mouth and tongue move and whether sounds are voiced or voiceless by touching your throat will add more tactile information for your baby to go by. I’m not sure how this would be worked into the reading program here, but these are just some extra ideas for you to try and maybe see what works!
I haven’t taught deaf children or have any but I do know for a college class we used plastic eggs in an egg carton to teach braille. We would have a flashcard of the letter at the top of the egg carton and arrange our eggs to make the letter A in braille, I know that’s for the blind but sometimes that works also for the deaf. Also holding the child’s hand up to your mouth while you say the letter or word also helps by the vibration, then the child would hold his/her hand up tp his/her mouth and try to pronounce the letter or word. It did work with practice. Also a music teacher that I worked with developed a rythem for the alphabet the deaf child would place his/her hand on the drumb and the teacher would drum, while another child or teacher would hold the flashcard of the letter of that specific beat. The child could read and write with a scribe. Of course the teacher developed a curriculum that way for deaf children. Maybe you know of someone who could as well. or even use the guitar.
Seseame street had a show involving deaf children and how they taught them through vibrations. It may be on youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sesame+street+for+deaf&search_type=&aq=f
Sign language videos can be found on youtube as well. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=teaching+deaf+children&search_type=&aq=0&oq=teaching+deaf
here is another link http://www.signingsavvy.com/index.php it was posted by another person but I found it so helpful.
http://specialneedsparenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/help_your_deaf_child_read
http://deafness.about.com/od/literacy/a/deafliteracy.htm
http://www.tsbvi.edu/Outreach/seehear/archive/strategies.html
Here is some that I found searching, maybe they can help.
My thought are with you.