Baby, Let’s Read
By Sara Kennedy, H&V Headquarters
Ask any first-grade teacher about what they wish families would focus on in a child’s earliest years and they will say to build a strong foundation for learning. That teacher would hope for a strong attachment to the child you are nurturing, exposing them to play, exploration, affection, responsiveness and daily reading. A child not reading well by third grade is less likely to catch up (Cunha & Heckman, 2009; Peterson et all., 2019). Children typically developing enter kindergarten with a 5000-word vocabulary, and understand far more concepts than they can articulately express. Responding to a child’s attempts at language actually improves brain architecture as they grow (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child 2007). Loving, stimulating play with lots of touch, consistent nurturing and safety starts the process of brain growth. Responding to the child’s needs, expressions and sounds lights up and creates more connections in the child’s brain.
Reading as a complex language process
Deaf/hard of hearing children are “not just hearing children who can’t hear” as researcher Marc Marschark noted. Many D/HH children need explicit instruction in the foundations of reading. Scarborough’s Reading Rope model shows the many complex processes that weave together as the child develops as a reader with strong decoding skills and content knowledge critical to success. Reading begins early, built on high exposure to affection, touch and feeling safe. As a baby’s nervous system begins to regulate, learning can happen, and long before a child knows the alphabet.
The age of identification and the start of early intervention, the presence of additional needs and the parents’ educational levels impact reading outcomes. Living in a multilingual household can slow language development at first but then it takes off as children learn to “translanguage” (answering in one language when asked a question in another, etc.) However, researchers find that “even the strongest readers–Deaf children of Deaf parents who had access to ASL from birth and those with greater access to spoken language” generally demonstrate somewhat better academic outcomes than D/HH children without those characteristics. Nevertheless, neither group as a whole achieves at the level of their hearing peers.” (Hartman, Nicolarakis and Wang, 2019). We know that only 67% of all third graders read on grade level. Parents play an important role in supporting early reading according to the 2019 Runnion and Gray study.
Reading instruction remains highly controversial, with a Science of Reading (with a strong phonological base) and balanced literacy approaches (and leveled reading with sight words) still at odds. Certainly, children without access to sound can be strong readers without the phonological awareness once thought so critical. Just like children who are hearing use the units of letter sounds, blends and vowels with the rules of language to make words, children using ASL learn a manual phonology with handshapes, orientation, location, movement and non-manual markers, and fingerspelling to begin to create meaning of signs, and produce signs with meaning. But this must be explicitly taught.
What can parents do to promote early reading skills?
Parents can’t wait for the debate to finish. Yes, narrate your day, talking/signing with mental states verbs and emotions, with verbs and adjectives, and expand on what your child expresses. Give your child a chance to look, laugh, or gesture, and continue. Surround your child with inspiration to read and write. Children who see their parents reading are better readers. If reading from devices, read aloud from the sports story for a bit to show you are reading versus playing a game. Your child will imitate you reading, so ham it up. Set a reading time where you read your material (cookbook, magazine, or show them the computer reading) and set them up to “read” their own books from the earliest ages. If your child is writing (scribbling), ask what the “words” are. Opening the mail, going to the library, picking up a magazine, and reading street and store signs are all part of creating a print-rich environment. Hang large letters of your child’s name in their room and point out letters and sounds regularly. Turn on the captions for the television long before your child can read. Soon your child will be showing you they see the “T” in their name from Starbucks to Target (and no, it doesn’t have to be the first letter of the word at this stage.) That sign recognition? Recognizing the sign for the grocery store and McDonald’s is part of cracking the code of symbolic meaning.
“Just one more book!”
If asking for another book is your child’s complaint, you are on the right track. If your baby is still trying to eat the book, all the better. Sharing books exposes a child to a higher vocabulary, introduces new concepts, and even lowers parental stress. There is rhyming and rhythm, and more variation than the usual comments parents make (“it’s time to eat”). Reading 15 minutes a day, according to pediatrician John Hutton, feeds your child’s brain with vocabulary, concepts and powerful social emotional bonds. Leala Holcomb, Ph.D., notes that parents and child reading together is a time of bonding and attachment, and brings a complex world within a child’s reach. Reading helps us understand ourselves and the people, ideas and things that fill the world.
Let your child choose books. Follow their interests. Read with exaggerated expression, going overboard on rhythm, pausing, speeding up, acting out the characters, singing, and occasionally asking “what will happen next?” Keep the book within view and you can even sign ON your child’s body to keep them engaged. Give an Oscar-worthy performance to keep your child’s joint attention and shared gaze with you, and take a break when it is too much stimulation for a baby and resume again a bit later. For older toddlers, create experience books for their trip to the grandparents’ house, their sister’s broken leg, visiting the library or museum, or anytime you are going to experience something new. This responsive shared reading jumpstarts communication and building language, memory, and sparks a lifelong love of reading through your positive relationship.
Read it again!
Yes, let them turn the pages, touch the pictures, and lift the flaps. You do not have to read or sign word for word at first, but follow your child’s lead and get more of the story out as they show interest. Share the pictures and expand beyond the text. Ask an older child to predict. Repeating stories is something all children enjoy. With the comfort of the familiar, they enjoy and get more out of a book on a second or 22nd time. You can go deeper into the plot and characters and they will absorb the vocabulary, sequence, fluency, and concepts with each re-reading. A child as young as two may “read” the book back to you. That’s a good thing!
Building Print Awareness and Concepts of Print
Put your finger on the print often while reading books and point out words in the environment. You can point to rhyming words and fingerspell or say them to show they sound or look the same. Very young children learn to imitate reading from left to right (or top to bottom in China). If we talk about what the book is about while looking at the cover, and pointing out the words, a child begins to connect meaning to the print. You can have your finger trace the words as you say them or before and after you sign them. Again, fingerspelling is a huge bridge to print awareness. If you find your toddler is trying to “read” a story back to you or “write” their restaurant menu on their notepad, or knows the characters in favorite books enough to chat about them in sign or spoken language, you will know your child is on the way to reading. Your early intervention program will help you track progress for your individual child, and set audacious goals for this amazing early period of rapid brain growth customized to your child.
Grow Background Knowledge
A baby learns the little cow toy in the farm set says “moo”, and eventually connects cows to a farm and giraffes to the zoo or the jungle. You may have animal toys that you teach about as you are playing or cleaning up. Reading these animals and how they are the same or different further deepens their knowledge. At preschool, the teacher will read a book like The Mitten or Brown Bear Brown Bear and they will have a better grasp about what is happening in the book. You may add in songs like Old McDonald or make up your own songs about the family dog. As they get even older, a teacher may read Charlotte’s Web or the Tale of Despereaux, which will mean so much more when they understand about animals, growing up, loss, regret and forgiveness… through reading.
Pay Attention to Access
Consider what your child needs to have good access to language and communication and aim for that. A D/HH child identified and entering early intervention on time, with access to a fluent home language and fluent language models, using devices consistently if applicable, with visual supports or cued language/manually coded English or ASL has the best opportunity to achieve literacy. If you are signing, keep reading even if you don’t know the sign; use all your other skills to bring the story to life. Playing with language with jokes, rhyme and rhythm is directly correlated with eventual fluent reading. Your early interventionist is an important resource and can give you access to other supports if needed. The stakes are high: early literacy lays a foundation for learning and wellbeing that lasts a lifetime. Reading stands as a major predictor of wellbeing. Let’s get started. ~
References:
- Hartman, M.C., Nicolarakis, O.D., & Wang, Y. (2019). Language and literacy: Issues and considerations. Education Sciences, 9(3), 180.
- Runnion E, Gray S. What Clinicians Need to Know About Early Literacy Development in Children with Hearing Loss. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2019 Jan 28;50(1):16-33. doi: 10.1044/2018_LSHSS-18-0015. PMID: 30950774.
- Scott, J. A., Goldberg, H., Connor, C. M., & Lederberg, A. R. (2019). Schooling effects on early literacy skills of young deaf and hard of hearing children. American Annals of the Deaf, 163(5), 596–618.
- Fifteen Principles of Reading to Deaf Children: https://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/ndec/early-intervention/15-principles-for-reading-to-deaf-children/
- Scarborough’s Reading Rope: Description and video on Reading Rockets: https://www.readingrockets.org/videos/meet-experts/scarboroughs-reading-rope
- FL3 Language and Literacy Tip Sheets with video introductions and Parent Activity Guides: 8 tip sheets are downloadable from the website at https://handsandvoices.org/fl3/topics/lang-lit-soc.html