Visual Phonics and Instructional Strategies at ASD

After a tour of the academic facilities at ASD, we were fortunate enough to experience direct instruction in three different classrooms that focused on language building through use of Visual Phonics.

At the Kindergarten level, students were focusing on alphabet identification leading into phonemic awareness.  The dynamic of this class followed a whole group/individual/whole group model with the teacher using a total communication approach (both sign and spoken English.) Students were asked as a whole group to identify words that began with "w" around the room, then later the students, equipped with individual dry erase boards, were asked to "explore" the classroom and hallway for words that began with the letter "r."  Students would write the word and draw a picture that corresponds with the word.  After the activity students regrouped and shared their findings. Throughout the instruction and activity, the teacher used Visual Phonics to represent the sounds of focus letters, and practiced sound production using this technique with students.

 

In the 4th grade classroom we were able to observe a spelling test with the phonemes of each word represented visually as they are auditory represented for any hearing child taking the same test.  Again. the instruction was through use of total communication with the assistance of Visual Phonics.  We had a lot of fun with this small class of four boys as they corrected their own tests, and found unfortunately in English, rules can be broken and vowel sounds can be spelled multiple ways!  The boys showed us their pen pal writing to other schools for the deaf around the country including Wisconsin School for the Deaf.



 

In a 7th grade classroom students were playing class game is which they would analyze groups of character pictures associated with each Visual Phonics phoneme to produce an English word.  Total communication was used for this game.

 

 

 

American School for the Deaf - West Hartford, Connecticut

 

The American School for the Deaf was founded in April of 1817, a time in United States educational history when literacy, religious beliefs, and self sufficiency were beginning to be taught concurrently.  With aims to expand on the nation's focus, the establishment of the school and sign focused curriculum was first seen as an experiment, but would actually stimulate a change in societal views of mental capabilities of the deaf and hard of hearing.

Our fellowship begins here in West Hartford, the birthplace of American Sign Language.  We sought out to experience various classroom instructions using Visual Phonics (a visual representation of English phonemes,) as well as examine the school's transition program and available resources for students preparing for life after ASD.

Fund for Teachers

Jennifer Elko and Dena Schroepfer, Teachers of the Deaf at Rufus King International School in Milwaukee, WI were 2013 receipiants of a Fund for Teachers Fellowship.  This is our story....

Our fellowship proposal was developed initially out of a frustration from seeing the graduates of our DHH program not successfully transition from high school to college or successful employment.  Simply put, our students were graduating and sitting at home.  Why?  What were we doing wrong?  How could we decrease this trend?  We wanted answers, strategies, and fresh ideas.  So we proposed talking to other teachers of the Deaf at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, CT and the Institut National Jeunes Sourds in Paris, France.

Surely the first public school for the Deaf (INJS) in the world and the first public school for the Deaf in the U.S. would have answers!  What we learned might surprise you.  The following posts will explore everything we saw, learned, questioned, and marveled at during our travels.

What we can say straight away is this, we are in this together.  We have to work as a team within our schools, district, and community.  That community is bigger than our classroom community.  We hope what we share will be inspiring and that we will continue to strive to move our students forward.