Helping Children Love Literacy

Interview with Cathy Corrado

by Christine Griffin Washington H&V

Based on questions from families about strengthening their child’s reading and literacy skills, Washington Hands & Voices is focusing efforts this year on literacy. To help us, we are partnering with Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Youth Outreach’s Literacy and Transition to Adulthood consultant, Cathy Corrado. Together, we are providing a series of literacy workshops for families this school year called Helping Our Kids Love Literacy.

Below is a small portion of my hour-long Zoom conversation with Cathy to learn more about how she became interested in this topic and how to help our kids love reading and writing. 

 During the interview, I couldn’t help but reflect on how I helped our kids develop their literacy skills. It was a time in our lives that were some of the most meaningful and rich times we spent together. Once a child reaches a level of independence with literacy, it’s indeed a joy-filled experience for child and parent.

For our upcoming literacy workshop dates in 2022, contact Christine Griffin at gbys @wahandsandvoices.org

A Brief Summary of our Interview

It’s been my goal for years to figure out the best way to teach our deaf and hard of hearing kids to read and write, and what works best for my classroom of kids. When a student comes to a word they don’t know, what do they do? Do they look at me, or do they look at the interpreter, if using one? Through my experience teaching kids, there are several reading strategies to help a child read independently without always being there with them.

Years ago, the process to reach independent reading was called To, With and By. Today, there are other terms used; “guided reading,” “shared reading,” and “independent reading”.  Meaning, I’m going to read to you (read aloud), then I’m going to read with you sharing things together (shared), and finally, you’re going to read by yourself (guided reading and independent).  It’s important not to skip guided and shared reading because our kids need modeling. As a teacher, this means I’m going to read to my students a lot.

As readers we use semantics, syntax and graphophonics to gain comprehension of the written word. For our students who are deaf or hard of hearing, we don’t always have the use of phonics but shouldn’t count this out. With syntax, any student can read badly written English and keep moving on without noticing anything amiss. Some students’ strongest approach, then, might be semantics.

Furthermore, multiple meaning words, figurative language, metaphors, similes, and idioms are also difficult because often our D/HH kids don’t overhear their use through incidental learning. To strengthen literacy skills, we need to slow down to work on both the breadth and depth of vocabulary to develop phrase and sentence use.

Reading Strategies and Comprehension:

A starting approach is to expose our children to words multiple times and explore their meaning. Using Dolch words in meaningful ways can help to build early comprehension skills. From these lists of early sight words, we can look at multiple meaning words, like “ball.” “Ball” can also mean “dance,” or “fun,” as in “have a ball.” 

I’ve heard how some families have created word walls at home. For maximum meaning, the child can pick their words, and change them once they achieve some mastery.

Another tool I use is “Bridge Phrases” which are common idioms. For example, the phrase “put up” i.e., “put up with your baby brother”, to have patience. Our English language is filled with these, and as a class we discuss the meaning of these often and use them in our writing.

Modeling Writing

Writing is a big part of literacy. Writing also builds strong reading skills. Though, for anyone who writes, it has to be meaningful—It has the be authentic.

Unlike hearing kids, our D/HH students don’t learn to write incidentally by eavesdropping on conversations. So, I start the school year by examining writing samples of each student to determine what parts of writing to address. Then we write every day, we begin with list writing, two-word poems, invitations, or anything they use in real life. Then we begin writing stories while at the same time analyzing the stories we’re reading together in class (looking for the beginning, middle, and end, understanding characters, problems, (plot) and solutions.)

I see kids writing about the same places: home, school and maybe church. So, together we will create new word lists to expand their writing vocabulary. Think about the lists at a job site: the people, the pronouns, settings, action words (verbs) that go with that job. We also study prefixes and suffixes to help kids decipher words and expand their use.

An activity to model critical thinking is to write in front of kids. In school I would write as much as I expected the students to write. By modeling writing, the kids can see that writing is not easy; you sit down and have to think about what you’re going to write, make mistakes, erase and go back, edit, revise and rewrite. For the kids to see other samples of writing, I invited others in the building (a para, another teacher, or the principal) to come and write in front of the students.

Loving Literacy

One of the things we talk about at IEP meetings is we’re going to have a year’s growth in a year’s time. Along with trying to reach the next goal, I want kids to become lifelong readers. My goal is to create lifelong readers. I want them to read forever and to love reading.

Sometimes as adults we have ideas of what our kids need to read. Let them read what they want to read. For example, in my experience, many deaf/hard of hearing kids love nonfiction. They want to know how things work. We read what we want to; that’s just how it is.

It can be hard at times to see how our kids struggle mightily, and at those times I just say, “Wow.” I’m patient, though, because on other days a student gets it for the first time. The light bulb goes on, and they see that they can go back to correct their reading or writing. That’s golden.  ~

H&V Communicator – Winter 2022