Auditory Skill Development & Speech Curricula

1. Auditory Skill Development & Speech Curricula

2. Definitions…Let’s Be Clear • Phoneme – The smallest unit that has meaning, i.e. /t/, /f/ • Phonological Awareness – The ability to distinguish parts of speech (syllables and phonemes). The ability to blend phonemes together. P.A. is related only to sounds! • Phonemic Awareness – A subset of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the act of identifying as well as manipulating phonemes. i.e phoneme/grapheme relationships • Phonics – The instructional method used to connect phonemes and graphemes

3. More Definitions… • Alphabetic Principle – The common understanding that letters are used to represent speech sounds and that there are relationships between written and spoken words. (Found in any written/spoken language) • Context-Based Language – Language used in the natural environment, rather than in therapeutic and/or ‘false’ environments • Syntax – Rules of a language • Decoding – “breaking down” unfamiliar words into phonemes – ‘deciphering print patterns and translating them into the sounds of language’.

4. Levels of Intervention… --------------------------------------------------------- Least Intervention Most Intervention *Informal *Formal * “Natural Approach” *Teaching Subskills

5. Auditory Skill Development… The Curriculum has directions for over 200 individual and classroom activities, many with suggested variations. These activities are correlated to particular ASC objectives and keyed by suggested grade levels. The ASC was developed by audiologists and teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students to supplement, refine, and extend all other communication programs used in the classroom and clinic.

6. Auditory Skill Development… • SPICE (Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum Evaluation) • Available through: Central Institute for the Deaf, 4560 Clayton Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110, 314-977-0000 (V), 314-977-0001 (TTY), http://www.cid.wustl.edu/ • SPICE is a curriculum kit for developing speech/listening skills/processing skills in children who use either cochlear implants or hearing aids. • Includes a manual, a set of accompanying toys and picture cards, and a demonstration video. • Program provides a sequence of lesson objectives and suggests a variety of activities for each objective. The activities are designed for children ages 3 through 12 and can be adapted to a variety of language levels. • Goals for the curriculum are listed in four categories: detection, supra-segmental perception, vowels and consonants, and connected speech.

7. Auditory Skill Development… • Bringing Sound to Life: Principles and Practices of Cochlear Implant Rehabilitation • Available through Advanced Bionics: http://www.bionicear.com/Support_Center/Educational_Support/Therapy_Resources_for_Children.cfm?langid=1 • 4 Video Series Includes: • The building blocks of spoken language • Understanding hearing and hearing loss • Cochlear implants and children: An opportunity, not a cure • Principles and practices of cochlear implant rehabilitation

8. Auditory Skill Development… Word Associations for Syllable Perception (WASP) • 225 kid-friendly picture cards representing the 40 English phonemes • Young children can relate • Start with single phonemes and simple syllable sounds like mmm, baa, and sss • Then systematically introduce words with increasingly complex combinations from consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words

9. Auditory Skill Development… DASL II • The Developmental Approach to Successful Listening II  is a sequential, step-by-step listening program to help hearing impaired children and adults develop and use their residual hearing. It was developed at the Houston School for Deaf children by Gayle Goldberg Stout and Jill Van Ert Windle. They wanted something that would be easy to implement, progressed in very small steps to allow the children to succeed, would make it easy for teachers to plan appropriate goals for IEPs, and something that would promote success in learning to listen. • Cochlear Corporation400 Inverness Drive SouthSuite 400Englewood Colorado 80112USAToll Free: 1-800-523-5798Telephone: 1-303-790-9010Fax: 1-303-792-9025 • The Part Number is FUZ041.

10. Auditory Skill Development… St. Gabriel's Curriculum (Second Edition 2005) follows normal developmental milestones, and addresses the particular needs of young children with a hearing impairment from the age of diagnosis through to school entry. This curriculum addresses those areas most at risk as a consequence of hearing impairment: • Audition • Language • Early Communication • Speech • Cognition • Social Interaction

11. Auditory Skill Development… Auditory Verbal Therapy “AV THERAPY is just one piece of the AV APPROACH... it is not just a method or a bunch of techniques and strategies. It is a Lifestyle!” The goal of the Auditory-Verbal practice is that children with hearing impairment can grow up in a regular learning and living environment that enables them to become independent, participating, and contributing citizens in mainstream society (Auditory-Verbal International, Inc., 1991). Auditory-Verbal therapy teaches parents how to create an auditory learning environment for their child to develop spoken language through listening during everyday natural and meaningful communication.

12. AVT Continued… Auditory-Verbal Therapy is designed for the parents to participate in the child’s education. Therapy is diagnostic, with each session being an ongoing evaluation of the child’s and parent’s progress. The children learn to use their amplified hearing or their cochlear implant to listen to their own voices, the voices of others, and the sounds of their environment in order to understand spoken language. There is no set curricula per se, rather, Auditory-Verbal Therapy encourages and follows natural language and speech development. The parents and therapist encourage the child to integrate hearing, language and spontaneous speech into the child’s personality (Pollack, 1985; Estabrooks & Samson, 1992; Estabrooks, 2001). While certain language curricula might be employed, these materials are designed for children with normal hearing abilities.

13. AVT Continued… The Auditory-Verbal Approach differs from the auditory-oral approach and traditional aural habilitation in that families who choose the AV approach follow a set of guiding principles to enable their child who is deaf to learn to listen and process spoken language (see principles below). Although families who participate in oral education programs or auditory-oral programs may utilize strategies and techniques of the AV approach in their practice, an Auditory-Verbal intervention program embraces all the guiding principles. The salient differences may be that traditional aural habilitation programs and auditory-oral programs may rely on therapists and teachers as models and children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing may receive instruction or therapy in groups. There are no “Auditory-Verbal” schools, in that the purpose of integration is to educate the child in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) with the highest expectations, and the mainstream classroom serves as the LRE for children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing.

14. AVT Continued… Doreen Pollack, one of the original founders of the Auditory-Verbal approach, stated that the goal of the approach is that children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing are integrated into their community, and a typical living and learning environment is retained. She believed that everyone in this environment must believe that the child can hear, expect the child to respond appropriately, and show him or her how to communicate through spoken interactions. When an all-day listening atmosphere is created for the child, surrounded by meaningful contexts of daily activities, with children who have normal hearing and language abilities, communication becomes relevant.

15. AVT Wrapped Up… PRINCIPLES OF AUDITORY-VERBAL PRACTICE• To detect hearing impairment as early as possible through screening programs, ideally in the newborn nursery and throughout childhood. • To pursue prompt and vigorous medical and audiologic management, including selection, modification and maintenance of appropriate hearing aids, a cochlear implant, or other sensory aids. • To guide, counsel, and support parents and caregivers as the primary models for spoken language through listening and to help them understand the impact of deafness and impaired hearing on the entire family. • To help children integrate listening into their development of communication and social skills. • To support children’s auditory-verbal development through one-to-one teaching. • To help children monitor their own voices and the voices of others in order to enhance the intelligibility of their spoken language. • To use developmental patterns of listening, language, speech, and cognition to stimulate natural communication. • To continuously assess and evaluate children’s development in the above areas and, through diagnostic intervention, modify the program when needed. • To provide support services to facilitate children’s educational and social inclusion in regular education classes.

16. Phonological Awareness & Visual Phonics • P.A. includes the ability to auditorily distinguish parts of speech, such as syllables and phonemes. The ability to blend and segment phonemes is critical to the development of decoding and spelling skills. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much research. Phonological awareness is often confused with phonics, but it is different. Phonics requires students to match sounds with letters or letter patterns and use these to say words. Phonological awareness is only related to sounds; letters are not part of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness. • "Phonological awareness" is demonstrated by awareness of sounds at three levels of sound structure: syllables, rimes, and phonemes.

17. Phonological Awareness & Visual Phonics • Visual Phonics help deaf children “see” and internalize English phonemes and understand how they map onto English letters and onto words. • The Visual Phonics hand movements mimic the articulatory patterns of the mouth that are used to create different phonemes, and the written symbols mimic these hand shapes. For example, the hand sign for the “t” sound is made by rapidly flicking the forefinger off the thumb, much like the tongue flicks off the teeth when the sound is made. This one-to-one correspondence, and the kinesthetic nature of the hand movements mimicking speech production, can help students to know what mouth movements go with different sounds and spellings as they learn to recognize (lip-read) or pronounce new words. • In the written notation, each symbol is a simple visual representation of the hand sign. Each symbol always represents the same sound. Visual Phonics also produces all the sounds near the same location, to the right side of the face near the mouth.

18. Visual Phonics…More in Depth • It is known that it is necessary to have INTERNAL Phonological Processing for reading achievement…thus, D/HH students must be taught Phonological Awareness through explicit, systematic and structured methods • Although residual hearing allows more immediate access to P.A., all D/HH deaf individuals can be taught P.A. through visual, tactile and kinesthetic cues as well as audition

19. Visual Phonics…More in Depth • Visual Phonics is a system made up of 45 hand and symbol cues that represent phonemes of spoken English which provide visual and kinesthetic information associated with the way a sound is produced verbally • Visual Phonics is used in order to provide D/HH students with COMPLETE and ACCURATE representations of the phonemic aspects of spoken language, no matter of hearing acuity or communication method

20. Visual Phonics…More in Depth • Visual Phonics can be used as a SUPPLEMENTAL tool in literacy instruction. The language of instruction can remain manual and the previously inaccessible or partially accessible features of spoken English are rendered accessible

21. Examples:

22. Visual Phonics…Key to English Print Written symbols that go with the hand cues so students can make connections.

23. Visual Phonics…Our Answer… • Question? Why do we have to use V.P.’s orthography??? • Using both the hand cue and the orthography help the child internalize phonological awareness • Students are taught that the symbols of V.P. represent “sounds” whereas letters are the “written form of the sounds” • Research states: “decoding” the V.P. symbols before trying to make connections to letters assisted in the overall decoding process and facilitated a later transition to letters and word meaning

24. Visual Phonics…Strategies • Rhyming Words • Present words with hand cues. Students see similarity in how the words look with hand cues • Phoneme Counting • Students count phonemes by using hand cues which allows them to see how many phonemes are in a given word. • Oddity Task • Use hand cues to allow students to see which words begin or end with the same or different sounds and to identify what the specific sounds are. • Sequencing and Segmenting Sounds • Present sounds in words with hand cues, which provides visual feedback and enhance the student’s ability to sequence/segment sounds in words.

25. Cued Speech…The Misconception Often times people believe that cued speech is supposed to be used as a language, but it is actually a visual representation of the language that is used and has been adapted.

26. Why Are We Learning This…NOW? • I feel it is my responsibility, within the confines of this class, to provide you with the basic understanding of speech development, evaluation procedures as well as various curricula to support you in your endeavors to teach deaf and hard of hearing students. • I also feel it is vital for you to learn the auditory development curricula available to children and families as you may be asked to support them in their efforts. • Finally, I feel that you should have access to all of this information so you can access these various resources, then ultimately integrate the multitude of therapeutic concepts into your daily lessons and classroom activities that will in turn foster long term language and literacy learning.