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Strength in Numbers
Being alone is hard! We often hear the term “Critical Mass” and its value wi th studends who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), not only when budgeting for services, but to help students recognize that they are not alone. Similarly, teachers of the deaf or hard of hearing and others who support students with hearing loss educationally derive significant benefits from having a DHH professional ‘community.’ [Read More]
Critical mass. A past Hands & Voices article titled “How Many are Enough? Defining ‘Critical Mass’ ” defines critical mass as the number of students in a classroom, program or school that share a common communication mode and characteristics that are sufficient to support direct interaction opportunities. Critical Mass helps build a stronger identity, provides role models, and enhances self-esteem and a better concept of self. In today’s mainstreaming environment, more than 88% of students who are DHH attend school in their home district. The number of DHH students who receive special services is approximately 1% of total students.
Click here to read through the rest of the Early January 2021 Update
how to sign something. Marco Polo is free and available on both 
professionals who have a passion for advancing, uplifting and empowering deaf and hard of hearing students – who, in my opinion, are the most amazing, fun, underappreciated, and misunderstood (on a needs level) population of students that exists.
for only $99.00. 
Can face-to-face intervention 
Listening and learning virtually is just as challenging and fatiguing for students who are deaf/hard of hearing as listening and learning in the classroom through masks. The following recommendation will make it easier for your deaf/hard of hearing student to understand online lectures:
Students with hearing loss typically experience difficulties understanding multiple talkers. This is true in both live and online communication environments. The following recommendation will make it easier for your deaf/hard of hearing student to follow the dialogue of multiple talkers online.
Like their typically hearing classmates, students with hearing loss may experience what has been coined as “Zoom Fatigue”, an online learning fatigue which many of us have experienced firsthand. Unlike their typically hearing peers, students with hearing loss are not only learning by listening to computer quality sound (as opposed to live speaking) but doing so through a compromised auditory system and mechanical or electrical devices. As well, they may mishear but be unaware of their misunderstanding, adding another layer to their fatigue and cognitive load
Classroom hearing assistance technology, interpreting services and captioning are often viewed as expensive within tight school district budgets and special accommodations are often seen as a hassle. Yet without these necessary provisions students who are deaf or hard of hearing are discriminated against due to a lack of equal access to school communication. Sometimes school teams with limited experience in the needs of students with hearing loss choose to refuse to provide necessary accommodations, take a ‘wait and see’ attitude, or downplay their importance if any difficulties arise in their consistent use. DHH professionals and families of children with hearing loss must be prepared to respond.
Despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, schools remain responsible for offering an equal educational opportunity to students with hearing loss. To do so we must identify and address access issues in online learning situations, along with tailoring assessment to identify a student’s full range of needs. Big questions from the field of education for children with hearing loss include ‘What assessments should we be using?’ and in these trying times, “How can we assess during COVID”
For equal access students with hearing loss should be able to perform with at least 90% accuracy during online learning presentations. Ideally, you will have performed the FLE under classroom conditions and have the percent scores under different listening conditions that can be compared to the following.
For the purposes of students who are deaf or hard of hearing we really want to know how students perform on auditory (or sign interpreted) comprehension tasks relative to their typical class peers. Results will reflect (1) the degree to which hearing loss is posing as a barrier to comprehension along with (2) the impact of any language issues the student may experience. This is true whether the student is face-to-face in a quiet room, or in an online learning situation.
Case in point: a child had an IEP in kindergarten and grade 1 and was then dismissed. By the end of grade 4 reading scores had decreased. The school team wasn’t concerned because the student ‘wasn’t very bad yet. When looking at eligibility, dig into prior testing and see if there is evidence of declining percentile ranking in test results over time. For example, in grade 2 the child scored at the 48th percentile in reading as compared to the 26th percentile in grade 4. A public agency must provide a child with a disability special education and related services to enable him or her to progress in the general curriculum. The fact that there is a decline indicates that there are special needs that have not been addressed for the student. Access needs and/or deficits in specific skills foundational to reading comprehension would then need to be identified.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced educators worldwide to adjust their methods of teaching, moving from direct classroom instruction to virtual teaching. While these adjustments have proved challenging, teachers everywhere are providing instruction in reading, math, writing and more, through remote learning techniques. They are being creative so that various curricula can be used to meet the needs of the students. Those serving students who are deaf and hard of hearing learning listening and spoken language skills have an added component to consider: how to best do auditory skills teaching in a virtual environment?
The National Association of the Deaf has released a 
Write! Keep a journal of daily activities by writing or drawing, create a 
Introducing Teacher Tools Takeout
Categories of instructional information for students on Teacher Tools Takeout include:
Integration with Teacher Tools membership: 
A Connecticut mom of a student with hearing loss shares her journey into establishing greater awareness for the need for emergency preparedness when children are hard of hearing or deaf. Read more for:
Your student is an individual and there is no one size fits all safety plan. If a student has a communication need specified in their IEP or 504 Plan then this need should be reflected in the safety plan. Plans should be simple, uncomplicated and not rely solely on technology. For example, if the IEP says the student must receive all announcements in writing, the safety plan must specify an effective means to quickly announced emergency information, which may or may not be the same as specified as an accommodation in the IEP.
Success in mainstream classrooms when you have a hearing loss is often a substantial challenge for our students. Even in 2016 the option of meeting the needs of students with disabilities in virtual school learning programs was considered. A letter from the US Department of Education defined a school’s responsibilities to students with disabilities enrolled in virtual learning settings. The letter affirmed that virtual schools must carry out the requirements of IDEA just as they must in physical schools. 
The CDC has issued guidance to help administrators of public and private childcare programs and K–12 schools plan for and prevent the spread of COVID-19 among students and staff. Many decisions have been made by governments and school districts to close school campuses. The 
As schools switch to online learning, many education companies are offering FREE subscriptions to their services. An open access Google Drive document with links to all of those possibilities can be found 
Did you know that 
EXPLAINING CORONAVIRUS TO CHILDREN: When trying to explain coronavirus to children, it can be difficult to know what to say. Two resources to share with families:
The leading cause of sensorineural hearing loss is heredity, but many people don’t realize that the second most common cause of SNHL in children is due to Congenital Cytomegalovirus or cCMV. It is also the most common congenital viral infection in the United States and resulting hearing loss may be preventable. CMV can cause wide variation in hearing loss, including progressive loss.
Educators who work with young children are at greater risk of contracting CMV and can help to prevent transmission of CMV by treating all body fluids as if they are infectious.
This includes:
Within the 149-page 
TOPIC: 
A recent research study* focused on the reading performance of students who were deaf/hard of hearing and had additional learning issues. The majority of the 214 students in this study had either intellectual or multiple disabilities as their primary disability while about 10% had DHH as their primary. Over the 6-year period the 314 students took an alternate reading assessment an average of 3.72 times between grades 3-11. When comparing the performance of the 214 DHH+ students with the performance of other students with significant disabilities taking the same alternate reading assessment, the DHH+ students had overall poorer performance and growth rates. Most of these students increased their performance on the alternate state reading standards as they progressed in grade level. The percentage of ‘proficient’ increased, while the percentage of ‘emerging’ decreased during the 6-year period. The fact that the study found students who are DHH+ had lower proficiency scores than other students with significant disabilities on their state alternate assessment underscores how the addition of hearing loss to a child with complex needs is multiplicative, not additive. The need for interdisciplinary teaming to untangle and respond to the unique and complex needs of students who are DHH+ is essential. Like all students, those who are DHH+ CAN LEARN!
The special education pendulum has swung away from segregated settings where students with special needs minimally mixed with ‘regular’ students in the 1980s to the current full inclusion model, where direct 1:1 instructional services are becoming rare. Students with hearing loss are already at high risk for ‘academic slippage’ due to their inability to completely access classroom communication without appropriate accommodations and supports. The move from pull-out services to provide intensive teaching in reading, language, and self-advocacy, places our students at even higher risk for developing increasing academic delays over time.
A recent US court case1 made it clear that students with hearing loss must receive an eligibility assessment that identifies areas of suspected need secondary to hearing loss must be evaluated with sufficient intensity to satisfy in depth evaluation. The special factors considerations2 also need to be applied throughout the evaluation process. Furthermore, the LEAD-K3 movement has spotlighted the need for appropriate, tailored assessment of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The big question from the field of education for children with hearing loss is ‘What assessments should we be using?’
Question from the field:
Many students who are hard of hearing or deaf enter school with limited vocabularies and language experience, whether their communication modality is spoken or signed. Given these constraints, vocabulary instruction is an essential and ongoing component of our work with students. The sheer breadth and depth of information presented in a general education setting is often overwhelming, however, pre-teaching vocabulary can be an effective strategy in helping students integrate new words and concepts into their “bank of knowledge”. Various factors come into play when pre-teaching vocabulary is identified as an accommodation and/or specialized instruction.
3. Discussion – For deeper understanding, discussion is paramount. The term “discussion” is not to be confused with “questioning.” Discussion, in a group setting, involves questions or comments going from student-to-student with the teacher acting as a facilitator where questioning usually goes from teacher-to-student, back to teacher, and then to another student, with content being more strictly controlled by the teacher. Discuss:
Despite the technological leaps made in Hearing Assistive Technology Systems (HATS), devices like hearing aids and cochlear implants do not “fix’ the listening challenges of students with hearing loss. Incomplete auditory access usually interferes with auditory skill development therefore, children who are hard of hearing benefit from practice with listening skills1. It is up to the professionals who understand hearing loss to provide listening strategy intervention for students who are hard of hearing.
Lack of appropriate intervention, follow through by families, other health/development issues, and problems with equipment function will all slow down expected development. For a performance checklist for development of complex listening skills, see 
Findings: The district was found to have violated provide a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) as the IEPs developed by the school did not address the student’s need to learn how to hear, comprehend, and communicate in her mode of communication, thus not providing her with FAPE. The court found that the school’s proposed placement would not provide the student with FAPE because:
(1) a VE classroom is inappropriate because the student needs an educational program in a setting designed to allow meaningfully access to the educational process through an oral mode of communication,
(2) the district professionals lack the necessary knowledge, training, and experience to implement the IEP,
(3) the VE placement does not provide for necessary parent training, ongoing audiology support and hearing device troubleshooting services,
(4) the VE placement will not adequately develop the student’s auditory brain structure, and thus her ability to hear and speak, during the narrow window of opportunity before the student is 5-6 years of age,
(5) the VE placement fails to provide the student with the opportunity to achieve the goal of being mainstreamed by kindergarten or first grade.
Listening practice can improve listening skills. Sweetow3 reviewed dozens of studies of auditory training and found that improvements in communication strategies—and often in sentence recognition—can be expected. When using a synthetic training approach, participants listen to spoken language, often at the sentence level, and learn to use visual cues, context and knowledge of language to understand the information.
Listening practice is underrepresented in most general education curricula. Listening can be challenging for many students, and even more difficult for students with hearing loss. If our students are to have improve their access to communication in the classroom, discussing listening challenges and practicing listening skills must happen during their time with professionals who understand hearing loss.
Q: How can we find time to assess and practice auditory skills?
A: Apply the Speech Perception Lens to every lesson.
Auditory speech perception is the 
Step One: Analyze the auditory task. To examine auditory tasks, looking at the first column of this table to find the complexity level of the spoken message to which the student will listen. For an early reader, a lesson on sound-letter matching will ask the student to listen to a phoneme. In a small group or partner discussion, the student will be listening to discourse.
Next, determine how the student will be responding. If the student is simply indicating that she heard something, a rare task in an educational setting, the task is one of 
Classroom observation is a critical part of assessment and performance monitoring. It provides the opportunity to collect data on how the student with hearing loss is functioning in the classroom in comparison to typical peers. Specifically, we need to observe behavior using what we know about how the hearing loss impacts speech perception, listening, learning, language, participation, behavior and overall social interaction.
Communication Lens
October is National Bullying Prevention Month.
Gallaudet researchers found that 812 deaf and hard of hearing students in eleven U.S. schools reported instances of bullying at rates 2-3 times higher than reported by hearing students. It is obvious that bullying is a serious problem. What is not always so clear is how parents, teachers, and deaf/hard of hearing students can work together to resolve it.
The first step is to inform and involve the parents, if they are not already aware. Every school now has clear policies about bullying. Find the bullying policy and be clear about how the student’s situation fits the definition of bullying per the school policy and the prevention and cessation practices already delineated. Once the administration clearly understands that a true bullying situation is occurring, try to increase their understanding of the extra vulnerability of students with hearing loss and the need to go above and beyond the action items spelled out in policy to truly address victimization of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
These activities can include:
Goals for communication repair and self-advocacy: As this month’s Update topic emphasizes, about a quarter of typically hearing students are victimized whereas over half of students with hearing loss typically experience some type of bullying. While being bullied is not the fault of the student with hearing loss, you can prepare them to deal with the likelihood of being victimized by adding goals for communication repair strategies and self-advocacy. This way you can work directly with your student on how to handle situations in which they are being bullied.
“I thought more 
Speech perception and listening accuracy cannot be assumed by looking at the audiogram – it must be assessed. Teacher’s voices, room acoustics, and classroom management vary so identifying listening challenges – and specific accommodations – needs to be done for students who are hard of hearing each school year. New information about the Listening Inventory For Education – Revised will help guide consideration of what typical listening challenges look like for students with normal hearing, so that we can better quantify these challenges for students who are hard of hearing.
The listening checks must be done in a quiet location. It may be in a classroom before the other students enter, the nurse’s office, outside of the classroom after the students have all left the playground, or wherever the team identifies as an appropriate location with minimal auditory distractions or interference.
HOW?
In my experience the listening checks are done as follows:
The Functional Listening Evaluation has become a mainstay in the field of DHH education and is commonly performed by educational audiologists and teachers of the deaf/hard of hearing. The FLE is a means to estimate how well a student is able to access verbal instruction, and to what degree speechreading, distance and noise effect performance.
The Listening Inventory For Education was revised in 2012 (
In most classrooms, new information is presented in a lecture format supplemented by reading material, until students build surface knowledge of the topic. Interaction activities such as classroom discussion, small group work, and partner problem-solving are used to solidify surface knowledge and to move students to a deeper level of understanding1.
Therefore, how well students are able to converse in the classroom setting truly impacts their move toward deeper understanding and learning at the expected pace.
Filling the gaps. Due to prior knowledge deficits we can expect that surface learning will take longer for students with hearing loss than their typically hearing peers. Students who have a less complete understanding of surface level information are not going to benefit to the same degree, or at the same rate, during interactive peer activities that are meant to move them to deeper understanding. “Closing the language gaps” is not something that is a nice extra touch to provide to our students if there is a teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing available – it is a necessary accommodation for equal access to learning.
Conversational inequalities. Research2 has indicated that during one-on-one conversations in a quiet setting, students with hearing loss have conversational skills equivalent to their hearing peers. This includes skills for initiating a conversation, maintaining a dialogue over several turns, shifting the topic, and terminating the conversation. In a typical mainstream classroom, there are many choices for communication partners along with background noise, reverberation, and listening at distances beyond 3 feet. These conditions all interfere with speech perception of students who are hard of hearing.
Students with hearing loss make 25% fewer overall communication attempts than their hearing peers. They also often seem unaware that their peers had tried to initiate conversation and do not attempt to maintain a conversation. When they attempt to maintain a conversation, they generally use one-to-two-word phrases to maintain communication and do not add new information.
Keeping up in the classroom is a challenge for children with hearing loss due to access issues that interfere with understanding conversational communication and the gaps in knowledge resulting from decreased auditory access since infancy (or sign communication with limited language models since infancy). Filling the gaps of vocabulary and phonological awareness is necessary for students to keep up with class expectations for developing surface learning. Access to classroom discussion and for all group activities is necessary for
deep learning to occur. Providing the appropriate access technology is a necessity if we are to allow deeper learning to occur within the classroom. Selecting appropriate group partners and honing communication repair skills is also critical to achieving at the same rate and to the same level as peers.
References:
At the start of each school year, thousands of students enter classrooms with teachers who have never encountered a child with hearing loss.
The following list summarizes key needs of students who are deaf or hard of hearing and the critical role of teachers to set the stage for student success in the mainstream classroom.
Hearing loss/deafness is a low incidence disability that requires specialists in the field to assess, plan and provide appropriate instructional programs. Yet, in some schools, the DHH specialist is told they cannot advocate for their students. This is primarily due to resistance to funding the extra costs to providing appropriate supports and services to students with hearing loss.
While it is very understandable for schools to be seriously concerned about budget limitations, the determination of a student’s free and appropriate public education (FAPE) 
The scenario of advocating for more DHH instructional time, captioning, interpreter services etc. and then being told that this advocacy will no longer be tolerated during team meetings or in discussions with parents is familiar to many teachers of the deaf/hard of hearing and educational audiologists. Continuing to advocate can sometimes end up with the teacher being considered insubordinate.
Is it legal for a school to totally restrict a teacher’s ability to advocate for student needs? There are two court cases that deal with this question: that are worth consideration:
The majority of itinerant teachers of the deaf/hard of hearing have caseloads of 10-25 students in 10 different buildings, with 85% of students being served 1:1 or in small groups, and about 30% of caseloads being students who are ‘deaf-plus’.
Fewer new educators of the deaf are graduating and a large number of teachers who have been in the field 20+ years will be retiring soon. Providing appropriate levels of service and support to our students and their mainstream teachers is increasingly challenging.
What is an approach to providing services that allow a realistic role for the itinerant teacher?
Consultation requires real time! All too often consultation time is considered ‘flexible time’ that teachers can use when there are schedule changes, new students, or unforeseen issues arise. Consultation for the ITDHH often involves monitoring amplification devices, contacting the student’s audiologist, extensive inservicing of the classroom teacher, connecting with other service providers, and keeping parents informed of issues and progress. This all takes significant time and organization to accomplish for a caseload of students. While consultation may require minimal effort for some types of students qualified for special education, it requires more substantial time and continued follow up for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Service decision-making: When asked about service provision decision-making, while 25% used a service matrix3, over half of the 2017 survey respondents indicated that when a new student is identified the amount of service time is dictated by the time available on the teacher’s schedule, even if there is a clear need for more direct ITDHH time. Students are most commonly served 60 minutes per week. It is not possible to close an academic gap of 6 months delay, and support an equal pace of learning, in just two 30-minute sessions per week, plus address self-advocacy and other expanded curriculum needs. Many, many of our students have greater language and academic gaps than 6 months and continue to receive less service than truly needed to rectify educational needs secondary to communication access issues. IEPs should reflect not only direct services, but also indirect services such as integrating IEP goals into the class curriculum and time needed to deal with hearing technology challenges.
Caseload caps – no-go: Use of caseload caps has often backfired in practice as some school administrators interpret the maximum caseload cap as a minimum. Caps also oversimplify the workload situation as the numbers do not allow for differences in workloads due to variations in itinerant travel and intensity of student needs.
What is an approach to providing services that can allow a realistic role for the itinerant teacher?
A model that has been receiving increasing recognition since 2014 among speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists, is called the 3:1 Workload Model. Per a recent ASHA article4, some of the benefits of the 3:1 Model include: improved quality of services, fewer vacancies, reduced litigation, increased opportunities for collaboration, greater ability to identify students needing services, significant reductions in professionals taking work home, better morale, increased ability to integrate IEP goals with classroom curriculum.
The 3:1 Workload Model, sometimes called the Flexible Service Delivery Model, is an evidence-based service delivery model that supports students in the least restrictive environment and encompasses direct services (teaching, assessment), indirect services (planning, teaming, meetings, teacher consultation, class observation, hearing device management, etc.), and district compliance services (IEP writing, assessment report writing, conferences, data logging, caseload management, team meetings, etc.). It may be most beneficial to call it the Flexible Service Delivery Model as those who do not fully understand the purpose of 1 week for indirect services may interpret this as an ‘easy week’ or ‘vacation week’ rather than a much-needed focus on collaboration and student supports.
In a typical school month, students receive 3 weeks of direct services and 1 week of indirect services. This allows for integration of targeted skills within core curriculum and increased collaboration between staff, parents, and IEP team members. The services provided during the 4th week of the month would include: consultation/meetings, observations, developing treatment materials, providing make-up sessions, more intensive services, assessments, IEP writing, progress documentation, team meetings, staff training, consultation with audiologists/CI centers, more intensive amplification checks, etc.
Documenting the 3:1 Workload Model on the IEP: “Therapy will be provided using a 3:1 service delivery model.” For example, the direct services would be written as: Student will receive 29 sessions per year (old model it would be written as 1x/week). Or student will receive 58 sessions per year (old model = 2x/week). Alternately, “Direct services will be provided by the itinerant DHHT X minutes per week, three out of four weeks per month. Direct services will focus on…” If you are interested in implementing this workload model5, you would write it into IEPs as they come up throughout the school year, changing the service minutes to reflect the 3:1 model that would begin the next school year. Students with the most intensive needs may not be appropriate for this model. Information on implementation of this model stresses the importance of ‘PR’ so that classroom teachers and families recognize the benefits of not only teaching students, but also supporting their ultimate classroom success.
References:
In the IEP document the need for access services would be included in the Special Factors section under considerations if the student is Deaf/Hard of Hearing. Many IEP teams will also include the interpreting service in the Low Incidence section, the Accommodations section, the service grid, and also in the discussion notes of the IEP and in the offer of FAPE.
Because special education and IEPs are based on a failure model, some teams struggle to find the justification for including interpreting services. This is when the family and team need to consider the regulations of the ADA in addition to the IDEA and focus on the need to provide equal access in the educational setting. The Office of Civil Rights has ruled that public school systems must give equal access to extracurricular programs. “School systems should routinely publicize the method that deaf and hard of hearing persons can use the request necessary services such as qualified interpreters, real-time captioning (also called CART), or assistive listening devices.”2
In my own experience I have seen all of the following successfully provided for students:
The law requires the IEP be reviewed at least once a year to determine if the child is achieving the annual goals (Section 1414(d)(4)(A)). The IEP team must revise the IEP to address any lack of expected progress and anticipated needs.
We need to not only strive to close language and learning gaps, we need to simultaneously support our students in keeping up with the day-to-day learning in the classroom. We MUST monitor progress to know if full access is truly occurring and to ensure that our students are keeping pace with classroom expectations. Without appropriate support, the trajectory of educational performance shown above is all too likely.
Students who are deaf or hard of hearing with no other learning issues – with full access to school communication – CAN progress at the expected rate IF they are receiving the appropriate intensity of focused support.
Compare Progress from Year-to-Year
Review your student files semi-annually for young children and annually for later elementary school-age students. If available, look at norm-referenced test results, like the high-stakes tests or language evaluations. Have the student’s percentile scores or standard scores stayed consistent? With your focused intervention and appropriate supports, have the student’s percentile scores improved? Or, like the previous figure depicts, has the student experienced inappropriate access and insufficient supports causing a decrease in performance over time?
For example, consider a student who scored in overall reading in
meant to move them to deeper understanding. “Closing the language gaps” is not just something that is a nice extra touch to provide to our students if there is a teacher of the deaf available; it is necessary for deeper learning. Add to this the fact that reduced listening ability often delays literacy skill development and slows reading fluency. Just teaching vocabulary, without sufficient phonological awareness, will not develop the reading fluency the students need for comprehension at the pace of peers. Filling in the gaps in prior knowledge is necessary if a child is to be able to develop the surface learning that is prerequisite to developing deeper understanding. Without this surface learning, a deeper understanding is not possible.
Conversational inequalities. Research4 has indicated that during one-on-one conversations in a quiet setting, students who are hard of hearing have conversational skills equivalent to their hearing peers. In a typical mainstream classroom, students with hearing loss make fewer overall communication attempts than their hearing peers. They also often seem unaware when their peers try to initiate conversation and do not attempt to maintain the conversation. When they attempt to maintain the conversation, they generally use one-to two-word phrases and do not add new information. The research found that in a 1:1 conversation, 75% of the conversation maintenance attempts by children with hearing loss were appropriate compared to 100% for hearing peers. They frequently tried to maintain the conversation by bringing up a topic that was unrelated to the conversation. In other words, they were not aware enough of the content of the conversation to contribute information, so they brought up a new topic.
Educational practices that seek to move students to deeper understanding typically involve interaction with peers. This is often very challenging for students with hearing loss when acoustic access inequality in the classroom results in conversational misunderstandings for students with hearing loss. This provides a powerful argument for the use of hearing assistance technology (HAT) that will improve perception of peer voices in 1:1 or group settings.
Challenges repairing breakdowns. Another aspect of conversation relates to 
what a person does when they do not fully understand. One study5 found that persons with hearing loss were able to cue into changes in topic but had much more difficulty when a shift in topic was made during the conversation. The research findings can be summarized as, “the more predictable the conversation, the fewer the likely breakdowns.” The teacher needs to be aware of this issue when pairing the student with different partners or groups. Moving to a quieter area for discussion will not ensure full participation by the student with hearing loss but it will make participation easier and more likely. Including him or her in a group that is more likely to stick to the topic will heighten the value of the exercise for the learner with hearing loss.
Keeping up in the classroom is a challenge for children with hearing loss due to access issues that interfere with understanding conversational communication and the gaps in knowledge resulting from decreased auditory access since infancy (or sign communication with limited language models since infancy). Filling the gaps of vocabulary and phonological awareness is necessary for students to keep up with class expectations for developing surface learning. Access to classroom discussion and for all group activities is a prerequisite for deep learning to occur. Providing the appropriate access technology is a necessity to facilitate deeper learning to occur within the classroom. Selecting appropriate group partners and honing communication repair skills is also critical to students with hearing loss achieving at the same rate and to the same level as peers.
who has school entry skills. Whether the family has chosen to use sign from birth, or it is the modality deemed to be most effective for learning by a school team due to child’s lack of progress learning to listen and speak – a student must progress through learning ASL in a developmental sequence to prepare them to make academic gains at least at the rate of their class peers. Developed by Gallaudet, the 
task of the same difficulty. While curriculum-based measures (CBM) have been commonly used in public education, it is appropriate to consider CBM use for students who are deaf/hard of hearing specifically. Developed as part of a grant from the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, the 
a common form of curriculum-based measurement. Maze presents sentences or short stories with every 7th word missing. The student must select which of 3 words best fits the missing word in the sentence. Clearly, as can be seen in the bar graph, even our students with hearing loss who do not have IEP services and supports are not performing like their age peers. Learn more about creating MAZE reading passages 
Per the Iowa Expanded Core Curriculum 
Everyone wants students to have a good experience in school. Often part of this desire by families is for their child to not feel singled out as ‘different.’ While it is true that our students are just ‘normal kids who happen to be hard of hearing or deaf’, it is also true that having a hearing loss means that they will be different in some ways from their peers. There are actions that can be taken to reduce the social and self-esteem consequences of being a ‘one and only’.
All placement, services, and goals offered in the IEP are effective upon signature by the parent or legal guardian and should be implemented immediately. A court case4 ruled against a school district who delayed the repair of a student’s FM system, even through the student maintained good grades saying, “his maintenance of good grades was due to his own diligence. The school was found to have denied the student FAPE and violated section 504.
If the IEP team recommended and offered the FM/DM technology in the IEP, then it should be in place prior to the first day of school. Of course, if equipment needs to be ordered and the student is starting school immediately, then every effort should be taken to ensure the student has appropriate auditory access to everything being said in the classroom as soon as possible. Different school districts differ in the way in which they acquire technology. In speaking with and working directly with the companies that supply these systems, there is no reason for there to be a month-long delay (let alone half of a school year). Some companies are also willing to send a system for the child to use as a “loaner” device while the district is going through their procedural process to obtain the equipment offered in the IEP.
The Barrier of Lack of Audiology Expertise
Students who are eligible for specialized instruction as Deaf/Hard of Hearing comprise one of the populations considered under low incidence disabilities. The discussion of low incidence equipment is one that is unique to students whose eligibilities require “personnel with highly specialized skills and knowledge … to receive early intervention services or a free appropriate public education”5 The Educational Audiologist is the service provider responsible for ordering assistive hearing technology6. Sometimes, school administration will put pressure on the teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing or the speech language pathologist to obtain HAT systems for students, which is inappropriate as recommending HAT equipment is outside the role and responsibility of both of these professionals.7 If you are in a circumstance where your district does not have an Educational Audiologist on the team, or if there is a lack of audiology service time to ensure prompt provision of the equipment, it is important for you to approach the administrator to find a solution. A clinical audiologist, especially one specializing in pediatrics, has the expertise to recommend appropriate HAT equipment for use in the school setting.
Be Empowered to Advocate
Facilitating the ordering of the required technology is necessary for your student to receive appropriate access to instruction and classroom communication. As the teacher of students who are deaf/hard of hearing you should feel empowered to let your district know that for your student to spend any time without the FM/DM syst