Shared Reading Project
The
Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University implemented
the Shared Reading Project to help hearing parents learn how to share books with
their young deaf or hard of hearing children. Often, these parents want to read
books to their children, but are frustrated in their attempts to do so because
they lack effective visually based ways to share books with their deaf child.
The Shared Reading Project attempts to translate lessons learned from research
about how deaf adults read to their deaf children into visually based strategies
that hearing parents and caregivers can use to read to their own deaf and hard
of hearing children. This translation process resulted in a complex intervention
that begins with the training of site coordinators, who in turn recruit and
train tutors to work with individual families. Tutors then coach the families in
book sharing strategies, which will to transfer into frequent, regular family book sharing
when the tutor is not present, as well as after the families' participation in
the project ends. Ultimately, the
benefits of Shared Reading are expected to impact the reading achievement of the
participating deaf and hard of hearing children when they enter the elementary
grades.
The
following are some statistics from Gallaudet Research Institute of Gallaudet
University, Washington, D.C. (the world's only liberal arts university
especially for Deaf and Hard of Hearing):
- At age 8, hearing-impaired children are two grade levels behind.
-
At age 18, hearing-impaired
children are eight grade levels behind.
-
At graduation, most
hearing-impaired children perform at the following levels:
Reading/vocabulary - 4th grade
Reading comprehension - 4th grade
Mathematics
Problem Solving - 5th grade
Mathematics Procedures - 6th grade
Language
- 4th grade
Research
with hearing children shows that children whose parents read to them when they
were young are better prepared to learn to read in school. Many deaf children do
not have the advantage of having their parents or caregivers read to them,
because 84 % of deaf and hard of hearing children are born to hearing parents,
most of whom do not use the native/natural visual sign language of their
children. If hearing parents do not read to their deaf or hard of hearing
children, these children enter school without the early family literacy
experiences they need to learn to read well. Deaf and hard of hearing children
need access to the same kinds of family based literacy experiences as hearing
children. The Shared Reading Project was designed as an accommodation to give
them that access through visually based language and communication.