Implications of a Sight Word Intervention for Deaf Students

The effectiveness of a sight word intervention designed for Deaf students was investigated. Thirty students, grades 1-7, in an urban school for the Deaf received an 8-month intervention. A pretest/posttest design using a teacher-designed instrument, the Cumulative Bedrock Literacy Sight Word Assessment, and the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (Mather, Hammill, Allen, & Roberts, 2004) assessed increases in the number of sight words students could identify and the rate at which they could identify them. Paired-samples and independent-samples t tests and Pearson product-moment correlations were used to analyze data. Results indicated a significant increase in the number of sight words participants could identify postintervention. Also, younger students increased their sight word vocabularies at a faster rate than older students. No significant differences based on home language or gender were found. The authors make suggestions for further research and program application.