cat

Making It Visual

I love working with Deaf and Hard of Hearing students are bright and capable and ready to learn when they come into my kindergarten classroom.  However, being deaf, they are unable to access the phonemic nature of the English language. Does that make english competency and reading impossible?  NO, of course not! We just have to provide different supports to give the students access to spoken and written English.  When working with Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students, the key word for every lesson is to MAKE IT VISUAL.  Not only is this very time consuming as a teacher, but it is impossible to make everything visual especially when learning how to read.

We all know the importance of having a strong base in phonemic awareness to be a successful reader.  However, what if you can’t hear the sounds?  What do you do when /c/a/t/ is just  the letters c-a-t?  We connect the sounds into something we have heard before and connect it in our minds with the picture and word cat.  With DHH students, there is no immediate connection between fingerspelling c-a-t and the sign for cat.  That connection must be taught.  How do we do that? LOTS of picture support!

I am so happy for the amount of clip art that has become available through sources such as teachers pay teachers, scrapping doodles, etc.  These products have helped me create a more visual resources for my students with ease. Since phonemic awareness/ phonics/ and word families are one of the most difficult areas for us, and are of such high importance in Kindergarten and first grade, I decided to make those resources first.

 I started with the Word Family Mega pack.  This pack features classroom posters, read the room cards, word building cards, sorting practice and sentence building practice.  I am really excited to use this in my classroom this year.  I foresee the word building cards (using the posters as support) as being a hit at the word work center. My students also LOVE read the room and we will be building our word family word recognition and spelling with this fun activity!
I will introduce the cut and paste sorting activity and the sentence builders in class but will probably end up sending these as homework towards the middle of the year.
 You can check out the mega pack here        Teacherspayteachers mega pack

In addition, I wanted to add extra practice and support, so I added these bingo games. The games can be purchased individually or, all together in the mega bundle.(If you buy the bundle, you get one free) My students love bingo and, I think, will be excited to play these bingo games while ( secretly) building their word family recognition skills.
These are a few picture samples, but please grab the FREE sampler HERE!    Word Family Bingo Sampler

I use all of my products with Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, but I also have a background in working with English Language Learners and special needs students and feel like this would benefit them as well.  What do you think?  Do you need to provide extra picture support in your classrooms?  Do you wish you had more time to create products that provided more support for some of your learners?  Send me your thoughts. 

One Response

  1. I'm very excited to have found your blog through Jungle Learner's giveaway. I look forward to reading about all the resources you use in your classroom to support your kiddos. I am your newest follower!

    Rae
    Mindful Rambles

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teacher of the deaf

Hi, I'm Heather Burgen!

I am a hearing teacher of the deaf dedicated to working with both deaf and hearing colleagues in providing the best education for deaf and hard of hearing children.

Learn more about me and how I can help you here

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