Week 10

Students who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing often have difficulty socializing and making friends with their peers.  How can you address this within your classroom?

If the student uses sign language:  Number one, I would like to encourage sign language in the regular education classroom.  Learning the signs for spelling words, etc. is a great way to provide the language for the students without taking up a ton of time.  I would also be interested in leading a sign language club, if enough students willing to participate.  This would give the students more language to communicate with the D/HH student, as well as give the D/HH student the opportunity to be a “leader” within that environment. 

I would have the students do activities in groups of two, and they will have to change partners every time.  That will help more students to interact with the D/HH student and hopefully start to become friends.  If the D/HH student has difficulty knowing how to interact with others, I would directly teach that because it’s a hugely important skill to have.  We could also role play interactions with others to try and help the D/HH student to feel comfortable.

I think it would be really neat to incorporate deafness and Deaf Culture/history in the regular education curriculum.  It could help the other students understand how to better communicate with the D/HH student, as well as to respect that student’s culture.

Communicating with parents is very important.  What are some ways you can communicate with parents and is there a better way than another?

Email, phone calls, in-person meetings, newsletters, notes sent home with the student, teacher’s website, and texting are all viable options of communication with/to parents.

I think all of these are good options and all should be used that the parent wants.  I want to communicate with the parents in the way they are most likely to receive the information and respond.  I think the subject matter also defines which is the best choice:  if it’s something of a delicate matter, perhaps an in-person meeting should be set up to discuss (the scheduling may need to be done via phone call, text, email, etc.) 

While I may be more comfortable using certain types of communication with parents, I will make every effort to use whatever type(s) with which each parent is most comfortable.