Problem: When I First Graduated with My Masters in Deaf Education, I Still Did Not Have

Problem: When I first graduated with my Masters in Deaf Education, I still did not have a solid grasp on how best to approach teaching Deaf students how to read. Two things helped me immensely, Star Schools and the Fairview reading program. Since Star Schools is well known to all of us, I will pose a problem that the Fairview reading program helped me resolve. We know that reading and writing English poses a variety of problems for the Deaf reader. One problem is multi-meaning words and how best to approach teaching them in a structured and organized manner.

One Solution: Our curriculum coordinator here at Texas School for the Deaf, who is always on the cutting edge of what is out there as far as curriculum goes, found an outstanding program called the Fairview reading program. It is the brain-child of Sandra Edwards, a CODA and Deaf educator herself, and Dr. Connie Schimmel. They saw the need for a program for Deaf students who approached literacy from a bi-bi approach (ASL as the first language and English as the second language through reading and writing.) The Fairview program is bottom-up in it's approach to teaching reading. It offers five different "bottom up" components in it's program. The are as follows:

1. The Bridge Lists and the Bridging Process

2. Adapted Dolch Word Lists

3. Phonemic Awareness

4. Reading Comprehension and Bridging

5. ASL Development/Written English

In my classroom I find that using the Adapted Dolch word lists for teaching spelling and for our classroom word wall has been extremely beneficial. The adapted Dolch words are those words commonly found in developmental readers. Fairview uses the Dolch word lists for pre-primer through third grade in order to link the Dolch words with their appropriate ASL conceptual signs. The sign for "make," for example has five different signs (create, earn, make a bed, cause, and force.) Therefore, the pre-primer list (for example) has 40 words, 60 different meanings and 70 signs. Students role play and make books with sentences and illustrations of the different meanings of the multi-meaning words. We include these words in our readings and writings as often as possible to reinforce their use in read and written text. At Texas School for the Deaf in grades K-2, we have started a Book Bag program where we send home small books each night for reading assignments. These books often target thematic topics, but also aim to include as many of the recently learned Dolch words as possible. In my class, we make time for 1:1 daily reading of our Book Bag assignments. When vocabulary pops up in these readings that target bridge words (see#1) or multi-meaning words (see #2) it gives the student and teacher an opportunity to work through strategies on how to approach that text to help figure out the most appropriate conceptual signs in that reading. The students then take home these readers and read the stories with their families. Although I approach bridge text as it appears in text, I do teach the Dolch lists from the pre-primer - third grade lists in isolation so the students will have an advance preparation or strategy on how to handle certain words before they are encountered in text in both read and written contexts. I have seen good success using this approach with my students.

Donna Altuna

First Grade Teacher

Texas School for the Deaf