Word-Level Instruction for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students: An Observation Study

Despite the fact that children's word reading and spelling skills are crucial for developing text-level comprehension and composition, little is known about what teachers do in classrooms to promote deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students' learning of word reading and spelling. This observational study examined strategies teachers of DHH students used when teaching word reading and spelling to DHH students who used spoken English. One day of language arts instruction in 23 kindergartens through second-grade classrooms was observed. Teachers' word-level instruction was coded. Results indicated that teachers spent substantially more time on word-level instruction during decoding and encoding contexts than they did during text reading and writing contexts. In addition, differences were found in teachers' use of strategies depending on the instructional contexts. Teachers utilized phonological strategies considerably more frequently than any other strategy in their word-level instruction.