Keys to English Print:

As published in Odyssey, Fall 2003
Reading Recovery with Deaf Children in PDF (11 pages, 78 kb)

Reading Recovery with Deaf Children

By Susan King Fullerton, Nancy Brill, and Christine Carter

Sharon had just finished reading a familiar book, A Friend for Little White Rabbit. Like more than one million other children (since 1984) in the U.S., she read the book to her Reading Recovery teacher, Brill. Without prompting, Sharon told Brill that the words from the text,“Come on!” were read using one sign as in Come_with_me. Unlike most of those other children, Sharon receives Reading Recovery instruction through American Sign Language because she is deaf.

In February 2003, we came together at the National Reading Recovery Conference in Ohio to share our work with students such as Sharon. We were together to present the Reading Recovery instructional procedures that we have adapted for deaf and hard of hearing students. As a former teacher and teacher trainer for the deaf, Fullerton has piloted procedures with deaf students and has served as a resource person and researcher; Brill and Carter, as teachers of the deaf who are trained in Reading Recovery, have used Reading Recovery procedures to teach deaf children.

In fact, since 1995, there has been a grassroots effort in the U.S. to use the theoretical foundation and lesson framework of Reading Recovery and develop one-to-one literacy intervention for deaf children. While no formal program has been established, teachers of deaf and hard of hearing children in different states are using adaptations of Reading Recovery. The presenters and members of the audience of the National Reading Recovery Conference, many of them teachers, were confident that Reading Recovery procedures offer strong literacy support for deaf and hard of hearing children.

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Literacy Development in Children Who are Deaf

In the last few decades, there have been numerous widespread changes in educational environments and instructional methods in the literacy education of deaf children. In spite of these efforts, the average reading level for a deaf high school graduate remains at a third- or fourth-grade level (Paul, 1998; 2001). Of course, it is logical for educators to focus on instructional methods, teaching materials, and interventions that support literacy development in older learners, but as many colleagues recognize, this concern calls for at least a two-pronged effort. On one hand, we need new and bold initiatives. At the same time, we need one-to-one interventions with struggling readers who are still developing language and beginning to notice print.

Photograph by John Consoli Model: Irene Swain

One-to-one tutoring is widely used to prevent reading failure with young hearing students. Surprisingly, the use of this intervention with readers who are deaf has received little attention. (See Nielsen & Luetke-Stahlman, 2002, for one exception.) Given the variability of factors that impact learning, attending to the needs of the learner in one-to-one contexts seems a viable solution. While class sizes of deaf children are often small, the variables that teachers must take into account in instruction are many, broad, and complex. These variables include: degree of hearing loss; age at onset of hearing loss—before or after language had begun to develop; cause of hearing loss; indications that the cause affected perceptual, cognitive, or motor capabilities; communication in the home; and communication method at school. Beyond these factors, there are differences in language, learning, and literacy abilities. Given such variability, it seems likely that one-to-one tutorials with highly trained teachers might provide deaf learners with effective literacy instruction.

What is Reading Recovery?

The theories that serve as the foundation for Reading Recovery are based on Marie Clay’s (1993; 1998; 2001) view that instruction for the lowest performing learners must address each learner’s individual and cultural differences, each learner’s specific levels of ability, and each learner’s responses toward literacy tasks. Developed in New Zealand by Clay, the goal of Reading Recovery is to advance the literacy development of struggling learners through supplementing effective classroom instruction with skilled and scaffolded one-on-one instruction (Clay, 1993; 2001). In less than a decade, over one million at-risk children in the United States have received instruction in Reading Recovery. Reading Recovery is also available in Spanish and French.

At the heart of Reading Recovery’s design is its instructional component. Each teacher works with at least four students daily in individually tailored 30-minute instructional sessions. Reading Recovery requires about half of each teacher’s day. During the other half of their day, teachers function in other roles, such as literacy specialists or primary grade teachers. Reading Recovery teachers participate in yearlong training, part of a tiered professional development model, for which they receive college credits. Much of the training, especially during the first year, centers on professionals who teach, observe, and discuss individually tailored and expertly sequenced lessons as seen through a one-way glass observation of other teachers at work.

In addition to this ongoing training, there is nationwide monitoring and evaluation of the students who participate in Reading Recovery. At the beginning and end of each child’s series of lessons, Observation Survey (Clay, 2002) data are collected and evaluated through the Reading Recovery National Data Evaluation Center based at Ohio State University in Columbus. Currently, this research is disseminated and used for monitoring and improvement by a not-for-profit network of 23 universities, over 3,000 school districts, and over 10,000 elementary schools in the U.S. Preparations are underway to collect data for deaf students as well. (See Askew et al., 1998, for more information on design and outcomes.)

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The Reading Recovery Lesson

Reading Recovery lessons, structured to meet individual student needs, consist of the following:

Familiar reading—A reader chooses several books to read that are familiar and easy. The interactions between teacher and child during this part of the lesson focus on the meaning of the story and strategies that the child uses to negotiate the text.
Running record of yesterday’s new book—Each day, the child reads independently a book that was introduced the previous day. As the child reads, the teacher remains neutral, recording and analyzing the child’s reading behaviors, determining what the child can do without support. When the child finishes, the teacher interacts with the child to help him or her improve processing of the text by focusing on one or two critical behaviors. After the lesson, this text is placed in the child’s collection of familiar reading books.
Letter identification—The teacher supports the child in using magnetic letters to increase letter knowledge and rapid recognition.
Making and breaking of words—The child learns to take known words apart and construct new words from those that are known. The goal is to help the learner attend to phonemes, clusters, and syllables, stressing left to right sequencing so that they can use this knowledge in reading and writing.
Writing—Children learn how ideas they and the teacher share can be written down. Each day the child, with support from the teacher, generates a written message. This portion of the lesson is highly scaffolded, with the child using a writing book to work on details of print such as letters, letter sequences, letter patterns and clusters, sounds, and words and to develop skills in auditory and visual analysis. The interactions of the teacher and child focus on phonemic and orthographic knowledge and on providing a strong orientation toward meaning in order to promote enhanced semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic knowledge sources for language.
Working with a cut-up story—The teacher writes the child’s message on a sentence strip. As the child reads the sentence strip, the teacher cuts apart the words or word parts. The cut-up message is placed in random order, and the child then puts the message together correctly. During this experience, the teacher reinforces the use of visual, meaning, and syntactic sources of information and requires the learner to be strategic in monitoring the message and searching the print.
Orientation and first reading of a new book—The teacher selects a new book based on the child’s current interests, knowledge, and strategy use, while also considering what new learning might be present and what difficulties might arise. The teacher guides or scaffolds learning, presenting key concepts that the child needs to be aware of, language from the text that may present difficulties, and perhaps noting one or two new and important words. Afterwards, the child reads the book. During this first reading, the teacher makes expert decisions about when to prompt and guide the child. After the first reading, the teacher may return to one or two key points to reinforce comprehension and strategy use.

It is important to note that within each component and across every lesson, the teacher converses with the child. Attention is consistently focused on the meaning and the enjoyment of text.

Reading Recovery with Learners Who are Deaf

Like other teachers and researchers (Schleper, 2002), we recognize the value of independent reading, including the opportunity to reread familiar texts. Research supports volume of reading as a way of improving fluency, incidental acquisition of vocabulary, and comprehension, with repeated readings showing strong effects (National Reading Panel, 2000). Every day in Reading Recovery, the child rereads texts. Books are selected in consideration of the child’s syntactic and semantic knowledge; as they are reread, the child becomes more secure in using and understanding various syntactic structures. Rereading enables children to use the redundancy and predictability of English language to anticipate word order. Rereading enhances language learning.

As Mike, a 7-year-old deaf first grader, reread The Pencil, Fullerton noted his staccato signing of phrases from the text. “Where-is-my-tail?”-said-the-dog. “Here-it-is,”- said-the-pencil. Reading in this choppy manner interfered with the opportunity to use the language of the text to aid comprehension. As she watched him, Fullerton was aware that the verb structure was different from the way that Mike might actually sign the question, making the task of reading a less familiar structure more difficult.

With a hearing reader, a teacher might offer support by using a small card or her thumb to expose a phrase at a time, asking the child, to “Put the words together so that it sounds like talking.” Fullerton made this procedure visual for Mike. She covered up the words “said the dog” with the card revealing, “Where is my tail?” “I will use the card to show you the groups of words,” she told him. As Mike read, “Where is my tail?” Fullerton quickly slid the card across to reveal the words, said the dog, helping Mike to see the breaks in the language, and supporting his ability to use language in more manageable and meaningful phrases. Not only did this seem to make a critical difference in the reading of this text, but also using this procedure for a subsequent book helped Mike to begin to do this more independently.

The teacher also uses the child’s current knowledge and way of operating on texts as a guide. For example, Sharon, a 6-year-old deaf first grader, told Brill she wanted to write about the school getting a lot of money from the fair. A brief discussion in American Sign Language helped Sharon clarify her message. Then they both signed “School got a_lot (one sign) money.” Then Brill modeled the correct English construction using signs, “The school got alot of money.” Sharon practiced signing the sentence in English word order with Brill, while Brill made sure that the sentence was expressed in meaningful units, i.e., The school . . . got a lot . . . of money. As Sharon wrote the story in her writing book, she had many opportunities to practice English word order. Brill prompted her to go back and reread what she had written to figure out what the next word would be in her story.

For example, Sharon wrote school with a bit of assistance from Brill. Then she reread, “The school,” anticipated the next word in her message—got—and quickly wrote it. By the time Sharon completed the writing of the message (with support from Brill when needed), she had reread her message numerous times, an activity that provided an additional tutorial effect on her language development. Once she completed the message, she reread it again to check that everything looked right and made sense. Then Brill wrote her message on a sentence strip, cut out and scrambled the words, and Sharon put them back in the correct English order.

Sharon and Mike are part of our experience that suggests that Reading Recovery has much potential in supporting literacy acquisition for young deaf students. As we work with many different children, we will continue to study and adapt these methods through conducting trials and collaborating with others in the fields of literacy and deafness.

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References

Askew, B. J., Fountas, I. C., Lyons, C. A., Pinnell, G. S., & Schmitt, M. C. (1998). Reading recovery review: Understanding outcomes and implications. Columbus, OH: Reading Recovery Council of North America.

Clay, M. M. (1993). Reading recovery: A guidebook for teachers in training. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (1998). By different paths to common outcomes. New York: Stenhouse.

Clay, M. M. (2001). Change over time in children’s literacy development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Clay, M. M. (2002). An observation survey of early literacy achievement (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Jessup, MD: National Institute for Literacy.

Nielsen, D. C., & Luetke-Stahlman, B. (2002). The benefit of assessment-based language and reading instruction: Perspectives from a case study. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 7, 149-186.

Paul, P. V. (1998). Literacy and deafness: The development of reading, writing, and literate thought. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Paul, P. V. (2001). Language and deafness (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Singular Thomson Learning.

Schleper, D. (2002). SSR? DEAR? USSR? or DIRT? No matter what you call it, independent reading is for everyone. Odyssey, 4, 26-28.

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Bibliography

Gioia, B., Johnston, P., & Cooper, L. G. (2001). Documenting and developing literacy in deaf children. Literacy, Teaching, and Learning: An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing, 6, 1-22.

Journal of Reading Recovery. Columbus, OH: Reading Recovery Council of North America.

Limbrick, E. A., McNaughton, S., & Clay, M. M. (1992). Time engaged in reading: A critical factor in reading achievement. American Annals of the Deaf, 137, 309-314.

Literacy, Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing. Columbus, OH: Reading Recovery Council of North America.

Livingston, S. (1997). Rethinking the education of deaf students: Theory and practice from a teacher’s perspective. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Luetke-Stahlman, B. (1999). Language across the curriculum when students are deaf or hard of hearing. Hillsboro, OR: Butte Publications.

Marschark, M., & Clark, M. D. (Eds.). (1993). Psychological perspectives on deafness (pp. 269-310). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Marschark, M., Siple, P., Lillo-Martin, D., Campbell, R., & Everhart, V. S. (Eds.). (1997). Relations of language and thought: The view from sign language and deaf children. New York: Oxford University Press.

McAnally, P., Rose, S., & Quigley, S. (1994). Language learning practices with deaf children. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

McAnally, P., Rose, S., & Quigley, S. (1999). Reading practices with deaf learners. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

National Data Evaluation Center, http://www.ndec.reading-recovery.org.

Reading Recovery Council of North America, http://www.readingrecovery.org.

Books Used in Article

Randall, B. (1996). A friend for little white rabbit. Illustrated by D. Aitken.Rigby.

Randall, B. (1996). The pencil. Illustrated by I. Lowe. Rigby.