Can You Guess the Big 5?
- Assessments that reflect unique needs of our students
- Assessments to tease out performance issues in students who are ‘okay’ academically
- Assessments that will be helpful in planning intervention


- Summarizing and Sequencing
- Participating in Discussions
- Following Directions
- Understanding Language Concepts
- Problem Solving and Predicting
- Listening for Meaning

- Lexical/Semantic: knowledge and use of words and word combinations
- Syntactic: knowledge and use of grammar
- Supralinguistic: knowledge and use of language in which meaning is not directly available from the surface lexical and syntactic information.
A. If the student was found to have language within average
For ages 4 to 16 years 15 to 20 minutes to administer Test of Narrative Language 2 identifies our student’s issues carrying on conversations, relating experiences. No transcription required.
- a functional assessment of narrative comprehension and narrative production;
- a measure of the ability to comprehend and produce three types of stories: a script, a personal narrative, and a fictional narrative;
- a system for scoring oral narratives that does not require clinicians to transcribe the stories;
- a normative test with clear, well-organized norms tables and administration procedures, as well as an easy-to-use record form; and
- a fair and equitable assessment of narrative discourse for all children.
B. If pragmatic language was not evaluated (thoroughly) by the SLP
Obtain information from the classroom teacher about how well the student uses social language.
Takes classroom teachers 5-10 minutes to complete.
PLSI for ages 5 to 13 years
Students with hearing loss often have a 3+ delay in pragmatic language!
PLSI has 3 subscales:
- Personal Interaction Skills
- Social Interaction Skills
- Classroom Interaction Skills
- Clear cut-off scores
- Guidelines for interpretation
- Useful diagnostic instrument

- Word (Pair) Discrimination: Assesses ability to discriminate whether a given word pair is the same or different
- Phonological Deletion: Assesses ability to manipulate phonemes within words
- Phonological Blending: Assesses ability to synthesize a word given the individual phonemes
- Syllabic Blending (Supplemental): Assesses ability to synthesize a nonsense word given the individual syllables
- Number Memory Forward: Assesses ability to recall an auditory sequence of numbers in the given order
- Word Memory: Assesses ability to recall an auditory sequence of words in the given order
- Sentence Memory: Assesses ability to recall a spoken sentence
- Number Memory Reversed (Supplemental): Assesses ability to recall a reverse auditory sequence of numbers
- Processing Oral Directions (without background noise): Assesses ability to process and recall oral directions when presented in quiet listening conditions
- Auditory Comprehension: Assesses ability to comprehend oral language at the sentence and narrative level, including literal recall, inference, and higher order language tasks such as idioms and figurative language
- Auditory Figure-Ground (Processing Oral Directions with 4-speaker babble background noise) (Supplemental): Assesses ability to process and recall oral directions when presented with competing background noise
Identifying Student’s Functional Issues in the Classroom

Communication Lens
- How much instruction does the student understand?
- What is the student’s level of classroom interaction?
Participation and Social Language Lens
- What strategies or compensatory skills does the student utilize?
- What does the student do when there are learning breakdowns?
- How does the student understand and use social language in the inclusive classroom setting?
- Are the student’s use and understanding of social language developing appropriately?
Curriculum Lens
- What strengths and gaps in access were observed when the teacher delivered the instruction?
- What strengths and gaps in access were observed during peer discussions and group interactions?
- How did the student access the general education curriculum when technology was used?
- Does the student demonstrate progress similar to their cognitive peers in the general education curriculum?
“Tyler turned to watch his peers offering oral responses 2/9 times, or 22% of the time.”
Duration – total amount of time a student is engaged in a specific behavior.“During a 45-minute class, Sally attended to the interpreter 60% of the time. The longest interval of attending was for 5 minutes.”
Latency – elapsed time between an event and the expected behavioral response.“Gerald hesitated before following teacher directions in 4 out of 5 instances observed. In comparison to peers, his hesitation ranged from 15 seconds to 2 minutes longer to begin an activity than a sample of 5 surrounding peers.”
Click here to download the Classroom Observation Record of Behavior
Focused Consideration of Access Needs
Click here to download the Accessibility Considerations Worksheet
Gathering Information from Classroom Teachers Teachers spend more time with the student than any other educational professional. It is necessary to obtain their thoughts about the student’s function in comparison to class peers. By providing checklists targeted to identifying issues related to hearing loss, classroom teachers also become more aware of the subtle impacts of hearing loss on performance and may be more open to team discussions of student needs. Examples of teacher checklists are:- Screening Instruments For Targeting Educational Risk
Original forms can be downloaded from this webpage. Updated forms that are computer fillable are available in the Teacher Inservice Combo and Documenting Skills for Success.
- Listening Instrument For Education – Revised (LIFE-R) Teacher Appraisal
The Teacher Appraisal can be downloaded. There are two pages to the appraisal. The first page is the Teacher Appraisal of Listening Difficulty and focuses on student attention and class participation. The second page is the Teacher Checklist: Self-Advocacy and Instructional Access. The DHH professional can choose to request that the teacher fill out only one page, based on the information they desire to collect.
- Placement and Readiness Checklists (PARC): General Education Inclusion Readiness Checklist
This checklist can be downloaded. It may work best for the DHH professional to sit down with the teacher in an interview format to complete this checklist. Alternately, the DHH professional can complete the checklist after classroom observation and/or from their knowledge from working with the student and then invite the teacher to review and discuss the student’s performance. This PARC checklist is a reliable and valid tool to identify the readiness skills of students who are deaf or hard of hearing in grades kindergarten through 7. A study found that the mean ratings for DHH students were significantly lower than for their hearing peers.
Gathering functional information about educational performance is every bit as important as considering academic performance1. The communication access issues of our students require them to work harder, expending more energy, often to receive less information than their typically hearing peers. Functional performance issues require appropriate access accommodations. They may also warrant instruction in self-advocacy skills, social interaction, or other aspects of the Expanded Core Curriculum that need specific and direct teaching. 1 IDEA Eligibility Determination – Section 300.304(b)(1) 2 Americans with Disabilities Act: ADA Title II 28 C.F.R. 35.160(a)(1) and Title II 28 C.F.R. 35.130 (b)(1)(iii). Download this ArticleMore Tips For Itinerant Teachers
Early October 2018
Itinerant teachers must be ready for anything. Many itinerant teachers have evolved into their role, rather than trained for it. The transition from classroom teacher to traveling teacher meant altering my expectations and constantly redefining my role in my students’ education. Frustrating as it may seem at times, I find the role of itinerant teacher to be the most fulfilling. Just as “deaf children are not hearing children who cannot hear”, itinerant teachers are not simply classroom teachers with cars. Itinerants are also consultants, technology experts, cultural attaches, collaborators, and communicators. Itinerants know that planning and preparation are essential; we also know that all the best planning and preparation can be thwarted by traffic, weather, illness, changing schedules, miscommunication, fire drills, field trips, and heaven forbid—car trouble. Supporting our low incidence students so that their needs can be met in the inclusive classroom takes knowledge, heart, and stamina. Tips and tricks learned through the years: Show, don’t tell. When it comes to discussing the educational impact of hearing loss, it can be more effective to show, rather than tell. A five-minute video or a few seconds of an audio clip demonstrating what a child’s hearing level sounds like can be more effective than anything I have to tell them or any handout I can provide. These demonstrations are very helpful when you are asked the inevitable question, “So what or how much can he/she actually hear?”- Links to audio and video demonstrations have been collected on the following Supporting Success webpage: https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/for-professionals/demonstrations-simulated-listening-with-hearing-loss-devices/
- Links to videos – https://www4.esc13.net/rdspd/video-library/ A library of well-produced videos from Region 13 out of Austin, Texas that designed for teachers new to deaf or hard of hearing students in their classrooms.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwWAHyD0f4w another good resource for general education teachers.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITOg8keMKrA An alternative with cartoon-like characters.
- FM information and simulation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzxOJKCUug
- Find links to hearing level simulations and cochlear implant simulations can be found
More Tips For Itinerant Teachers


- Links to audio and video demonstrations have been collected on the following Supporting Success webpage: https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/for-professionals/demonstrations-simulated-listening-with-hearing-loss-devices/
- Links to videos – https://www4.esc13.net/rdspd/video-library/ A library of well-produced videos from Region 13 out of Austin, Texas that designed for teachers new to deaf or hard of hearing students in their classrooms.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwWAHyD0f4w another good resource for general education teachers.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITOg8keMKrA An alternative with cartoon-like characters.
- FM information and simulation – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzxOJKCUug
- Find links to hearing level simulations and cochlear implant simulations can be found









This article was written by itinerant teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing, Brenda Wellen. Brenda has a wealth of experience in working with students with hearing loss and school staff. She began as an aide in a Deaf Education self-contained classroom (5 years). Her first assignment as a teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing was a middle school self-contained classroom for 5 years after which she moved to an elementary self-contained classroom for 8 years, then back to middle school for 3 years as the students were gradually mainstreamed and the job transitioned into itinerant services. She has provided itinerant services for 9 years, working with all ages of children with roles as a parent-infant advisor, itinerant for D/HH students from 3-22, and as a “Supporter” for a adult with hearing loss who is a former student. Brenda is an invited contributor for Bimonthly Update articles. Download this Article
Advocacy Notes – Early October 2018

- Adjustments or accommodations in the regular classroom so that students can receive and convey information as effectively as peers.
- Related/auxiliary aids consist of devices, technologies, and methods for providing effective communication, as well as the acquisition or modification of equipment or devices (i.e., computer connection for hearing devices). Auxiliary aids can also include, but are not limited to, interpreters, note takers, and closed or open captioning.
- Related services refer to developmental, corrective, and other supportive services needed to ‘level the playing field’ for access and effective communication. In terms of students with hearing loss this can mean monitoring of auditory access/devices by the educational audiologist, inservice of classroom teachers and periodic progress monitoring (observation) and/or ongoing parent/teacher consultation by the teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing, teaching a student to effectively use hearing devices (i.e., operation, monitoring, troubleshooting of devices), etcetera.