For Teachers

Working with Students who have Hearing Loss

Many strategies that support students with hearing loss are also supportive to other students because the focus is on improving the auditory environment and creating a multi-modal presentation for learning. Consider the following, but be sure to consult with the student's case manager regarding the specific accommodations established for your student. 

Strategies to support students with hearing loss in the classroom: 

• Pair vocabulary in written and auditory form to support accurate discrimination from a similar word (e.g. "sharp" and "shark" may sound the same to a child with hearing loss but appropriately conceptualized with visual representation)

• Have a "signal" for when something was not heard. For example, raising an open hand could represent a question, while raising a fist could mean that the child needs repetition. This supports the teacher to present multiple-step instructions in a fluid process, while supporting the child's who did not hear. 

• Repeat questions and/or comments from peers. Students are often provided preferential seating to be in close proximity to teachers, but peers may be too far away for the student to hear. Peers also do not always enunciate adequately for a student with hearing loss to discriminate what is said.

• Enable captions on media when accurate. Review key concepts and vocabulary prior to or after the media to ensure learning objectives were accessible.

• Encourage the child to develop self-advocacy and awareness of needs! 

Visual Phonics 

Visual phonics uses the manual alphabet (from ASL) to represent speech sounds. One of the great benefits of visual phonics is that the same hand shapes are transferable to fingerspelling words. There is a direct correspondence to written English.  Visual phonics is not meant to be a comprehensive communication option, but rather a tool to support access to specific sounds that are inaudible.