Teaching Phonemic Awareness to Hearing-Impaired Students

Take a minute and stop and think what you do every day. If you were to make a list of five things that you do every day would communication be one of them. Sure it is something that many of us do not think about. But have you ever stopped to wonder how we learned what letters made what sounds. How to pronounce certain words? For most it is easy we just taught them it in school. But have you wondered how students who are hearing impaired learn it? The major difference is that students who are hearing impaired would not hear the sounds that are associated with letters the same way a hearing person would. The majority of individuals with normal hearing hear the words of their own language spoken to them thousands of times before, they are able to speak their first word. Not being able to hear the sounds of a language creates a problem for some individuals when it comes phonemic awareness. Every teacher should know how to teach phonemic awareness and phonics to hearing impaired students.

“Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in words. We know that a student 's skill in phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty.” (Phonemic Awareness | Reading Rockets) This is a critical literacy skill that both students who have or who do

There are simple sounds that make up the overall pronunciation of the word. These individual sounds are described as phonemes. Knowing what letters make what sound lead There are a lot of methods that would help a child who is hearing impaired to learn how to read. One process is that they would create mental images of sounds to help them remember what words are spelled certain ways and vice versa. Another way is called visual phonics. This is a way that students are hearing impaired can not only see the sound but have a visual