| As
published in Odyssey,
Fall 2003
Incorporating Phonics into an American
Sign Language and English Program...in PDF (7 pages, 55 kb)
Incorporating Phonics into an American Sign Language and English
Program: A Conversation
By Sara Schley & Gary Wellbrock
Sara Schley, Ed.D.,
is an assistant professor of education and research
at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in
Rochester, New York. A participant observer in Gary
Wellbrock’s kindergarten class, she directed the
Hunter College deaf education program from 1997-2001.
Schley focuses on integrating research findings into
practice in the classroom.
Gary Wellbrock, M.A.,
teaches kindergarten at the American Sign Language and
English School, public school #47, in New York City,
where a dual-language program for deaf and hearing children
was implemented in the late 1990s. Wellbrock is also
enrolled in the Hello Friend/Ennis Cosby Graduate Certificate
Program at Fordham University, with a focus on teaching
at-risk readers.
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In the dialogue below, two educators explore the incorporation
of phonics into the American Sign Language and English School for
deaf and hard of hearing students (public school #47) in New York
City.
Spring 1998
The conversation begins.
 SARA
SCHLEY (SS): I am interested in how literacy emerges in
deaf children who are schooled in an American Sign Language/English
program.
GARY WELLBROCK (GW): Yes, I am really excited
by the dual-language approach we are taking.
SS: What are you doing to implement the new standards
from New York City’s Department of Education?
GW: In every grade, students have to read 25
books during the year (New Standards, 1997). At the American Sign
Language and English School, we’re developing Literacy Packs,
a coordinated list of books for each grade, and a companion pack
of activities and materials for each book (Wellbrock, Schley, &
Davidovits, 1999).
SS: What other kinds of things do you do to get
your kindergarten students going with literacy, especially in working
on pre-literacy skills like letter identification?
GW: One example is that we focus on one letter
per week, with many different activities surrounding each letter
(Schley & Wellbrock, 1999). This involves children authoring
and illustrating their own picture dictionaries page. By the end
of the year, they have a complete picture dictionary. Also, each
week I hang a large and decorated paper letter from the ceiling.
The letters are displayed all year long, becoming clues for children
starting to link the letters to reading.
SS: Research shows that deaf students who are
proficient readers may code English at the phonological level (Hanson,
Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991). It’s not yet clear how they
do this, but it doesn’t make sense to ignore the phonemic
level of English during literacy instruction. I think your letter
unit goes in exactly the right direction.
[ Top
]
2003—
 Gary,
now taking classes in teaching reading to at-risk students at Fordham
University and bringing phonics instruction back into the classroom
at the American Sign Language/English School, continues the discussion
with Sara.
GW: I think I’ve been doing some phonics
instruction in class, but it would be phenomenal if I could apply
more of what I’m learning. For fall 2003, the New York City
Department of Education has adopted Patricia Cunningham’s
Month-by-Month Curriculum (Cunningham & Cunningham, 1992), in
which whole language principles and teaching of phonics are combined
in the teaching of beginning reading. The curriculum includes guided
reading, self-selected reading, writing, and “making words”—an
active, manipulative series of activities that teach children how
to look for patterns in words (i.e., how sometimes by changing just
one letter, or placement of a letter, they change the word). We’ve
been spending a lot of time figuring out how to incorporate that
curriculum into ours. Parts are easy. I use a Word Wall
, a display of high frequency words with new words added each week,
and it works well (see Kreul, 2003). It helps students remember
how to spell words.
SS: How do you explore phonics with a mixed deaf
and hearing group at the American Sign Language/English School?
GW: One activity, The Name Game, draws
the students’ focus to the initial sounds of words. This game
unfolds like a TV game show. I choose students, one at a time, as
contestants. Students come to the front of the room, introduce themselves
to the audience and to me, and wave to the folks at home. After
each contestant spells his or her name, I write it on the board
and underneath I write the name again minus the first letter. The
contestant chooses another student who picks a letter of the alphabet
to replace the missing letter (i.e., “Sam” becomes“Bam”).
SS: So this game requires that the students focus
attention on initial consonants and usually rhyme their names with
nonsense words. I bet the students love that game.
GW: Yes. The students get very involved, especially
due to the focus on their own names.
SS: Anything else?
GW: Yes—segmenting and blending words is
another tactic. I use the Initial Reading Deck (Cox &
Cleaver, 2002), a stack of picture/sound cards that address the
syllable types. Other phonics-based programs use this, such as the
Wilson Reading System and the Orton-Gillingham System. I have drawn
large versions of these cards for 15 initial consonant sounds and
two vowel sounds. Students hold a card and as a group we make words.
Three children use the cards to create a word like CAT. Then by
removing a letter or phoneme, one child at a time, we make new words.
CAT becomes RAT, then RAN, and so on.
[ Top
]
SS: That kind of activity works easily for both
deaf and hearing children.
GW: A slightly different tack would be to focus
on words that are morphologically related, where the root of a group
of words is similar. For example, imagine a word family that includes
play, plays, playing, and player. These activities
are important because they get children thinking about how words
are structured.
SS: I’m certainly impressed with the American
Sign Language/English School’s continued commitment to integrating
research findings into practice.
References
Burns, M. S., Griffin, P., & Snow, C. E. (1999). Starting
out right: A guide to promoting children’s reading success.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Cox, A. R., & Cleaver, J. (2002). Initial reading deck.
Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Service, Inc.
Cunningham, P. M., & Cunningham, J. W. (1992). Making words:
Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection. The Reading
Teacher, 46(2), 106-115.
Hanson, V., Goodell, E. W., & Perfetti, C. A. (1991). Tongue-twister
effects in the silent reading of hearing and deaf college students.
Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 319-330.
Kreul, M. (2003). Teaching strategies: The word wall: A tool
for beginning readers and writers. Retrieved June 2, 2003 from
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/wordwalls.htm.
New Standards. (1997). New York City edition of the new standards
performance standards: English language arts (1st edition).
New York: Board of Education of the City of New York.
Schley, S., & Wellbrock, G. (1999, December 1). Linking ASL,
fingerspelling, and the alphabet at an ASL/English dual language
school: Weekly letter units. New York State Education Department
VESID conference, Literacy and education: Teaching and empowering
deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing youth, New York.
Wellbrock, G., Schley, S., & Davidovits, D. (1999, November
9). Implementing the state curriculum literacy standards at an American
Sign Language/English dual language school: 25 books for the kindergarten
year. New York State Education Department VESID conference, Literacy
and education: Teaching and empowering deaf, deafblind, and hard
of hearing youth, New York.
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