Educators have been able to use early intervention techniques, hearing screenings and new technology to help children who are deaf or hard of hearing improve their literacy skills.

Over the past three years, College of Education Professors Amy Lederberg and Susan Easterbrooks have been developing and implementing curriculum and early intervention strategies for pre-K and kindergarten students with hearing loss, and a recent $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Special Education Research will help them continue this work.

"All of the early intervention improvements in recent years have created a generation of deaf children who have great potential for entering kindergarten on par with their peers when it comes to literacy, but they're still at risk of not reaching that level," said Lederberg, who will serve as the principal investigator on the project. "We've created an intervention for pre-K and kindergarten children to give them a strong foundation for literacy." 

The three-year grant, which will begin this summer, will allow Lederberg and Easterbrooks to continue developing and improving their curriculum, which teaches children about phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, storytelling, narrative structure and other fundamental literary elements.

To continue reading about the grant, click here.