reading

We use a number of strategies to promote reading skills with our students, following The 15 Principles for Reading to Deaf Children in particular. Click on the link and take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these principles.

Our group reading book is The Hundred Dresses , by Eleanor Estes. I prepare up to eight 'slides' for each reading class, using Powerpoint. Each slide has 'manageable' blocks of texts for students to read, analyze, and then switch to ASL. I project each block of text to the Smartboard, and this friendly method of presenting the text is helpful to our reluctant readers, who can feel daunted by a thick book, or even a long page of text. It's been nice to see students curious and even impatient at times to see what is in the next slide, and trying to find out by reading it.

In one slide this week, the phrase putting yourself in someone's shoes came up. It's something we teachers need to do when thinking about what it's like for our students to climb the mountain called English.