The Great Divide: When Standards and Reality Collide

1. The Great Divide: When Standards and Reality Collide Kristin Di Perri, Ed.D. June 24, 2013

2. Question for DHH Literacy Teachers: Why do teachers generally feel like they are taking one step forward and two steps back with their instruction?

3. Literacy Development and Hearing Children Birth to 5 Language Development Kindergarten -3rd Grade “learning to read/write” Grade 4th and on…. “Reading to Learn” ***KEY*** Language is always “whole”. Kids have had experience learning what “sounds right”. Language ability becomes more sophisticated with age and experience.

4. Literacy Development and Deaf Children Kindergarten -3rd Grade “learning to read/write” Birth to 5 Language Development Grade 4th and on…. “Reading to Learn” ***Key*** Access to English is piecemeal. Structure is generally lacking.

6. Common Core State Standards Provides broad goals that are a “consistent, clear understanding” of what we expect students to be able to do by the end of each grade. English Language Arts Standards: • Reading (Literature, Informational Texts, Foundational Skills) • Writing • Speaking and Listening • Language

7. Disconnect between Standards/Curriculum expectations and our students academic needs. For example: (2nd Grade CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.3) Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure. Little Red Riding Hood student narrative

8. Cleary that student’s written output needs some assistance….so lets look at the Language strand to help us with our instructional goals for teaching writing to DHH students….

9. “Language” Standard This is the section where educators have goals to help them guide students in actual writing ability. Example from Kindergarten (in writing or speaking): CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1e Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with). Seems reasonable…lets consider some English sentences using IN and ON….that should be easy….

10. ON and IN usage in typical, “easy” English The TV is on. The dog is in the house. The cat is on the table. Get you cookie order in soon. The cat is on TV. You are in trouble. The cat is on the TV. We play outside in the morning. The TV is on the blink. My mom was born in 1950. The party is on Tuesday. I will help you in a minute. We are on for next week. That color is in style now. The car was on fire. Please write in pencil. You can count on me. I am in a hurry. A personal favorite …how do you explain how the prepositions in/on work in this sentence?!?? They are in on the joke.

11. Idealism vs. Reality The incredible language work that happens in the birth to 5 year period is critical to the individual’s later literacy development. It cannot simply be dismissed when applied to the deaf child who has not had access during this time. There are things that happen linguistically in that time period that we must replicatein our instructional approach. Trying to “tweak” existing curriculum designed for hearing children’s English needs ignores the larger linguistic issue.

12. A Different Approach! Bedrock Curriculum For DHH students Components: • Foundational literacy building for beginning English literacy users (starting where OUR students start) • Objectives are written in specific, performance terms for accurate measurement • Arranges lessons in specific order • Includes lesson plans, activities, suggestions and ideas • Applicable for ASL and Spoken English students • Adaptable for any age student who is an English “beginner”

13. Lessons need to be: • Clearly focused-the objective makes sense and is measurable • Done in an order that starts with the most basic concept • Fits into a greater structure • Allows children to be as active as possible in the learning process

14. Writing effective, measurable objectives: For each objective you write, you want to: • Consider the task from the students linguistic point of view and experience and not simply following what’s stated in the curriculum. 2. All prerequisite steps have been learned (not simply “checked off” as taught).

15. Consider this common objective: “Given a pronoun, Student X will state the referent”. What’s the problem with this objective?

16. Concept Development: 3rd Person Pronouns: HE SHE IT Ask most DHH student what “he” means and he will say “boy”. HE =

17. HE=human boy only???? • This will cause problems from the earliest levels of reading. • Consider text from a Preprimer level DRA test: • Sam is a boy. • He has a dog. • The dog’s name is Tim. • He is a black dog.

18. Instructional Intent We have to make sure we expose our students to a deeper conceptualization of what a word means. In this case hemust also mean:

19. Teaching HE/SHE progression: A hierarchy of skills Concepts and lessons to develop for HE and SHE 1. Gender: boys and girls, then men and woman, can include baby in “blue” or pink” blankets/clothes. 2. Obvious people characters they know (e.g. such as book characters, action heroes, etc.) 3. Animal world (only a few pairs have clear differences lion/lioness, hen/rooster, buck/doe, etc.). 4. Story animal characters (e.g. Lady & the Tramp, Mickey Mouse, etc.) 5. Identifying features of inanimate characters-sometimes you need to look for clues to help decide pronoun use-Mr./Mrs. Potato Head, Mrs. Potts and Chip from Beauty and the Beast, etc.

20. Introducing “IT” A small, but complex word! • IT refers to things • IT refers to animals you don’t know the gender of • IT can refer to people of you don’t know the gender (like a baby) • IT can be a “Dummy subject”

21. Activities to develop concept of “IT” • Use HE/SHE cards to introduce new picture cards which do not fit into the two categories-thus we need a new category • HE/SHE/IT animal cards- students classify animals according to gender if known, IT if not known • Writing pronouns, subjects and subjects/pronouns This is a __________. ____ likes to eat people. Run!!!!!! The cat is cute. ____is soft. The ___________ likes to run. It is fast!

22. Pronouns: Explicit Clues in reading The following 2 slides are examples for practice pairing pronouns with clues from two sentences. The information is explicit. Sentences are written so that the subject is either clearly stated (e.g. Jack is a dog.)or sufficient information in the second sentence aids correct choice of a matching picture.

23. Betty is a baby cat.She is sleeping.

24. The house is blue. It has a red door.

25. Implicitly supported clues The next two slides are for practice pairing pronouns with clues from two sentences. The information is implicit. The student must use their own schema to connect with the text in order to choose the correct matching picture. Subjects in the first sentence are not clearly stated. The reader must get more “clues” from the second sentence to make a correct decision on which picture matches.

26. Rusty runs very fast.He has four legs.

27. Sue has long, brown hair.She loves to read books!

28. Contact Information Workbooks: Butte Publications: www.buttepublications.com Picture This: Multiple Meanings in English Context Picture This: Figurative Language in English Context Picture This: Multiple Meanings for Beginning English Readers Picture This: Phrasal Verbs - Figurative Language for Beginning Readers Visual Verbs Teaching State-of-Being Kristin Di Perri 606 Evergreen Drive Falls, PA 18615 Email: halimun@aol.com