How to Develop Literacy Skills for Kids with Hearing Loss

Reading aloud with your child is one of the best ways to grow their listening and talking skills, vocabulary, and preparing them for being a successful reader. Education Coordinator a Becky Clem, shows how daily book reading can help your child with hearing loss grow their literacy skills.

Meet the Speaker

Becky Clem, MA, CCC-SLP, LSLS, Cert. AVT, is the Education Coordinator for Rehabilitation Services. As a speech-language pathologist and listening-spoken language specialist (LSLS) with auditory verbal therapy certification, she is passionate about working with children with hearing loss and their families. She works to advance professional skills and education, mentor professionals towards LSLS certification, and supports family-centered care initiatives. She serves on the coordinating committee for SIG 9 on hearing and hearing disorders in childhood for the American Speech and Hearing Association. She presents at conferences at national and international levels and writes for publication on pediatric hearing loss intervention.

Previously she served on the AG Bell Certification Council. As a member of the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss she mentors in the summer teacher-training program in Vietnam. Her publications appear in the ASHA Perspectives, Volta Review, Pediatric Audiology Case Studies (Flexer and Madell, 2010) and Auditory-Verbal Therapy (Estabrooks, 2016). She presents at state, national, and international conferences. When not working, Becky adores reading, cooking, yoga, TCU football, and most of all time with her husband Keith, their two adult daughters, and one-year old granddaughter.

Visit Becky’s specialty program

Speech Therapy

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Transcript

00:10

Hi, my name is Becky Clem, and I'm the Rehab Services Education Coordinator at Cook Children's Medical Center. Reading aloud with your child is one of the very, very best ways to grow their listening and talking skills, vocabulary, and preparing them for being a successful reader. So how can you help your child with hearing loss grow their literacy skills through daily book reading?

00:35

One way is to pick out books that are related to recent experiences. For example, if you take your child to the zoo, you could pick out Dear Zoo, Good Night Gorilla, Curious George Goes To The Zoo, any of those zoo related books, and then read and talk about that. You can also take pictures at the zoo and put them together in a digital book on your phone, or on the iPad, or hardcopy and then tell the story of you and your child going to the zoo.

01:06

Another one is to read familiar stories, or rhymes, so that they hear information in repeatable, predictable ways. When they hear rhyming words, it's important to lay the foundation for phonemic awareness and reading.

01:21

One of the ways that's fun for children when reading books is to change your voices in the story. For example, in the book, The Napping House, by Audrey Wood, everyone's falling asleep at the beginning. So we would want to use a sleepy voice. The napping house, there is a house, a napping house, where everyone is sleeping. And in that house, there is a bed, a cozy bed, in a napping house, where everyone is sleeping.

02:00

Later on in the book, everyone starts waking up. So we would change our voice to make it more like everyone in the house is waking up. A wakeful flea who bites the mouse, who scares the cats, who claws the dog, who bumps the granny, in a napping house where no one now is sleeping.

02:34

So we change our voices in the book to keep the child's attention. And also, we make it clear to the child what's happening in the beginning, everyone's going to sleep, and then everyone's starting to wake up.

02:47

Also talking about the book before you show it. "We're going to read a book about a mouse." And I might make the mouse sound, which for children with hearing loss, we say, "eeh, eeh, eeh," and talk about cookies, "I love cookies. I wonder what that mouse is going to do with the cookie? Look, we're going to read If You Give A Mouse A Cookie." So I've gotten the child's attention. I've gotten the child's attention through talking about the book. And now they're excited to see what's in the book, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

03:25

So one thing you want to do is talk about the page before you show it to them. "He's going to ask for a glass of milk." And then I might point to this and look at the child to see what they say. And maybe they'll say something about that they want a cookie or they want a glass of milk. So when you think about reading aloud to your child, pick books out that are related to recent experiences. Read familiar stories or rhyming words that happen in a predictable way. Change your voice in the story. Connect what happened in the book with real life. Talk about the book before you show it to them. Wait after reading a little bit and see what the child does.