Family Conversations

1. Family Conversations Where families and children get a jump onlanguageand literacy Ann Curry, M.Ed. Susan Norton, PhD

2. Family Conversations Early Intervention Services for Families with children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

3. Our Missionto provide family-centered instruction that … • Promotes communicative interactions between all family members • Enhances the child’s language, speech, thinking skills and emotional health • Helps families become competent and confident in communicating with their child

4. Family Centered/Relationship Focused Services Family Conversations is dedicated to providing services that meet the needs of the individual child and family.

5. “How a child is held, talked to, responded to, and loved will effect how he begins to view himself, others, and the world around him.” –Kelly, Zuckerman, Sandoval & Buchlman in Promoting First Relationships

6. We strongly support family members as they learn to incorporate new strategies into their everyday lives. Our Communication instruction is designed to enhance the parent-child relationship and to include all family members. Families learn to include their child in all their Family Conversations. Parents can then get on with the job of parenting!

7. Who We Serve Any family in Western Washington with a child with bilateral hearing loss < 3 years old.

8. Services for your family • Home Visits • Playgroup • Parent Support & Education • Sign Instruction • Introduction to Deaf Culture • Lending Library • Advocacy & Transition Services

9. Communication & the Deaf or Hard of Hearing Child Each child with hearing loss has a unique set of strengths and needs.

10. Communications Tools Amplification Speech Gestures Auditory Training Lip reading Signing Exact English

12. Why Signing Exact English? • Deaf students struggle most with acquiring and mastering English. • For hearing children the structure of language is acquired by about age three. • Between 2 to 3 years of age, children increase the use of English grammar and syntax. • By age six, language structures are established, and are difficult to modify after the age of puberty.

13. Signing Exact English the bridge to Literacy Literacy & Speech Signing Exact English

14. We consider Signing Exact English a means of manual expression for those who are speaking English while they sign, and an introduction to the richness and variety of language for parents of young deaf children.

15. How S.E.E. helps develop speech… Creates visual means for past tense, plurals that are difficult to see/perceive : BOY instead of BOYS, WALK instead of WALKED Missed words: TO, AT, THE, FOR

16. How S.E.E. helps auditory skills… The speech sounds that are located in the higher frequency range are difficult to hear for a child that has a moderate or profound hearing loss (s, sh, f, th). These are clearly marked and included in Signing Exact English.

17. Development of Auditory Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants SEE + Spoken Language Comprehension Word Identification ASL, PSE or Combo Pattern Perception Detection No Response

18. Pearls of Wisdom in Communication ASL is a rich and expressive language, worth studying for its own sake, and many of its principles should and can be put to good use while using Signing Exact English.

19. Apples & Oranges • How SEE looks: • 1) Do you want to go for a walk with me? • 2) Are you hungry? • 3) Where is the ball? • I had so much fun playing the game. • I am so thrilled that I got a brand new movie. • How ASL looks: • 1) Want with walk? • 2) Hungry you? • 3) Ball where? • Wow, lot fun play game. • Thrill me finish get movie recent new.

20. Most adults who know only one language often have to some difficulty mastering a second. • For parents, becoming fluent during the early language-learning years is a very real problem. • It is similarly easier for most hearing parents of deaf children to begin with a form of signing in English than to attempt to become fluent in a foreign language (ASL) during what is for many parents a psychologically trying period of adjustment to their child’s deafness.

21. Why is this important to parents in making decisions? • Comfort • Confidence • Early Communication established • Must be clearly perceivable by the child. • Consistent language model across environments

22. Literacy and Birth to Three • For children who do not make good progress in these early years, • learning to read is difficult and is associated with both present • and future failure. • Children who do not learn to read well in the • 1st and 2nd grades are likely to struggle with reading throughout their lives.

23. Challenges to lack of awareness and phonemic learning: • Spellings remain odd shapes or arbitrary symbol strings and are extraordinarily difficult to remember • Struggles in learning to read and spell words • Lack develops a wide achievement gulf between themselves and peers who are phonemically aware • Explicit instruction in phoneme awareness help avoid reading delay

24. Children who are behind in their literacy experiences (storybook reading, daily living routines, listening comprehension, vocabulary, language facility) upon entering school become "at risk" in subsequent years (Copeland & Edwards, 1990; Mason & Allen, 1986; Smith, 1989).

25. Almost all of the children who have serious trouble learning to read (about 20%) are in one or more of these three groups – • children from low-income, low-literacy homes; • children from homes in which English is not the language spoken; • children who have learning/neurological/emotional disabilities. Greenberg, 1998

26. Experiences with print help preschool children develop an understanding of the conventions, purpose, and functions of print. • These understandings play an integral part in the process of learning to read, the value of purposeful shared language and mastery of English.

27. The difficult balance Literature Language

28. Language and Literacy begins at home With Literacy kits Families and children explore text, language and stories with manipulative hands-on activities that reinforce language, listening, participation, communication and many skills within the story.

29. From an emergent literacy perspective, reading, writing and oral language develop concurrently and interrelated in young children in literate environments (Sulzby & Teal, 1991), such as following along in a big book as an adult reads aloud or telling a story through a drawing (Hiebert & Papierz, 1989). 

30. Developmental literacy learning occurs during the first years of a child's life  (Mason & Allen, 1986) and is crucial to literacy acquisition (McGee & Lomax, 1990).

31. Research and Early Literacy Research supports a balanced approach to early literacy instruction through purposeful, functional use and meaningful context within a print-rich environment. Skills and strategies are taught within these meaningful contexts rather than in isolation.

32. The average high school graduate who is deaf has a fourth grade reading level (J.Holt). This delay is strictly due to language and literacy support. Signing Exact English Deafness English Literacy

33. Our Staff Communication Specialists backgrounds: • Early Childhood Education • Special Education • Deaf Education • Audiology • Sign Language Instruction • Regular Education

34. Staff Experience • Staff members bring tools and experiences from teaching in a variety of settings: • Oral/Aural • Simultaneous communications • Total Communication PSE or SEE • Personal experience with family members who are deaf or hard of hearing or are • Deaf themselves

35. Funding Family Conversations is funded by: • Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) • Developmental Disability Division (DDD) • Part C of IDEA • Tax deductible donations

36. Family Conversations Early Intervention for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children Ages 0 to 3 Where families and children get a jump on language and literacy Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center Seattle, WA (206) 987-5146