Fingerspelling Used in Classrooms by Teachers of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing

Studies have shown the benefits of fingerspelling on literacy skills in school-age deaf and hard-of-hearing students. This study is an observation of 20 first- and second-grade classrooms. The classroom observations were coded for fingerspelling event frequency, type, length, and whether it was chained to print. The observations showed that teachers used an average of 54 fingerspelled events during 40-min lessons. Teachers' frequency of fingerspelling was positively related to students' frequency of fingerspelling. The types of words fingerspelled included Vocabulary (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), Function (prepositions, articles, and conjunctions), Abbreviations, and Single Letter Names (i.e., manual alphabet). Teachers most frequently fingerspelled Vocabulary words (57.9%, SD = 22.1%) followed by Function words (15%, SD = 11.2%). The average length of Vocabulary and Function words were 4.2 (SD = 0.7) and 2.9 (SD = 1.1) letters, respectively. Teachers chained fingerspelling to print 20% (SD = 10%) of the time. We suggest that teachers could increase and more systematically use fingerspelling in early-elementary classrooms, explicitly bridging the connection between fingerspelling and print given its association with reading.