[Descriptive transcript: Video opens with a flyer for the 2024 Collaborative Experience Conference with the title in center, with a subtitle underneath: “For parents and professionals serving students who are deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing.” Title across top of flyer: “Keynote: Variable Language Input and Early Vocabulary or Development”. Across the bottom is a graphic showing an apple resting on a stack of books with a cup of pencils next to it. The Commission logo is on the right side, with text underneath: “build our future together”]
[Video transitions to a text slide with blue patterned background and white text. The title is across the top, “2024 Collaborative Experience Conference”. Text in center: “The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent, including the state of Minnesota.”]
]New slide: “This is a live recording from the 2024 Collaborative Experience Conference. The interpretations and captions were produced for the live audience in attendance at the conference. Some anomalies may exist due to the audience needs and the nature of simultaneous interpreting. This interpretation has not been reviewed by the presenter. We appreciate the interpreters’ and CART provider’s willingness to include their work with this recording.”]
[Video transitions to a split screen showing the PowerPoint on the left side with the presenter window on top, the moderator speaking, and the interpreter window on bottom. The CART captions scroll across the top on the left side.]
>> Sonia R. Smith, J.D.: I have the honor and privilege of introducing to some and presenting to others Dr. Stacy Tucci, who would present on the science of reading for deaf and hard of hearing learners. Dr. Tucci's experience parenting her deaf daughter forged the path for her work in the field of deaf education. Dr. Tucci received her bachelors in early childhood education and special education, her Masters in deaf education, and her doctorate in the education of students with exceptionalities with a research focus on Intervention studies for deaf and hard of hearing learners from Georgia State University. Dr. Tucci will talk about the science of reading implications for deaf and hard of hearing learners. Please help me extend a warm welcome to the stage Dr. Stacey Tucci!
[The moderator walks off-screen. Dr. Stacey Tucci steps to the podium.]
[New slide: “Science of Reading - Implications for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Learners”. Illustration of a brain below, “Reading Activity in the Brain”. Below, “Minnesota Deaf and Hard of Hearing Symposium, Nov 2, 2024. Stacey Tucci, Ph.D.”]
>> Dr. Tucci: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be able to be here and share some knowledge and information with you, and one of the things, just sort of piggybacking off of what was just shared is this idea of justice and this idea of language, and how that's a critical component of providing justice to our students who are deaf and hard of hearing. So there's this new term that's sort of floating around. So we all know with liberty and justice for all, there's a new term floating around in the literacy field with language and literacy for all, and I think that is really powerful term that we can start thinking about as we are educating, not only students who are deaf and hard of hearing, but any student who may be marginalized or underserved, or not always receiving those access pieces that they need to be as successful as possible. So I hope as you walk away from this conference that you walk away with that feeling that we know at least a little bit better than we did the day before. How to provide language and literacy for all. All right.
[New slide: “Early Brain Development”. Bulleted text below: “Construction of basic brain infrastructure begins before birth and continues into adulthood. Experience drives the development of brain infrastructure. Sensory Experiences: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste Communication Exchanges (Serve and Return) Language Nutrition A child’s environment supports or obstructs development. Toxic stress, access to nutritional food, linguistic accessibility Brains are built in a systematic fashion (bottom up). Simpler neural connections and skills form first, followed by more complex circuits and skills.”]
>> Dr. Tucci: So I'm going to be talking about the science of reading and implications for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, but before I can talk about reading science, I have to talk about brain science, because there are some significant distinctions around language development and literacy development. Language is an innate skill, and what I mean by that, is the brain is hardwired to learn language, and so if a typically developing brain, or a neurodivergent brain is put into a linguistically accessible environment. That brain will learn language and if any of you have young toddlers who are in the emergent language stage, and you're walking through your house and you've accidentally stumped your toe and you've said a word that you probably shouldn't have said, you know that that toddler very likely picked up on the emotion behind that word, went to their child care center the next day, and said that exact word, and you get a call from the child care director saying hey, they said… right? Because the brain is hardwired to learn language, and it is an equal opportunity language consumer. Bhe brain doesn't care if you are exposing it to American Sign Language, if you are exposing it to spoken Spanish, spoken English, Mexican Sign Language - as long as the brain can access that language, it's going to eat it up. It's going to take it in, and that is going to drive the neurological development of the infrastructure inside the brain. The great thing about that is, if we give the brain accessible language, it's going to learn it without explicit instruction. But there is a caveat there, because this is an innate skill. Because the brain is hardwired to learn language, there's a language window. So if we are not getting accessible language into that brain in the early years, we miss that language window, and that has significant implications for those academic skills that we are trying to - then provide that student later on. So early language access, early accessible language access is very very important for students to be ready learners. When we are thinking about reading development. When we are thinking about how the brain learns to read - reading is not an innate skill. The brain is not hardwired to learn to read. Only about 5% of the human population will learn how to read without explicit instruction. Only about 5%. That means if a child is going to be a proficient reader, that has to do with is - what kind of instruction we provide the dosage - the types of strategies, the types of interventions we are following, evidence. Right. But the great thing about the fact that the brain is not hardwired to learn to read, is that there is no reading window. We can teach a five-year-old brain how to read. We can teach a 15-year-old brain how to read. We can teach a 55-year-old brain how to read. We can teach an 85-year-old brain how to read, because the brain needs explicit instruction in how to read. So there is no window. So our kids have hope, even if you're working with older students who may have some really significant delays in reading, all hope is not lost. That brain can still engage in effective instruction and we can move the needle on literacy for all of our deaf and hard of hearing learners if we give them accessible instruction, and if we did, what we needed to do early on, which is place that reading brain or that future reading brain in an accessible language environment. So when you're thinking about language - I'm going to bring this term up in just a minute - but when you're thinking about language, language is nutrition for the brain. There was a public health initiative that was created in Georgia, and we were looking at how we can get language to young children regardless of what language they're using, and we thought about how do we explain this to parents, right? Because generally parents aren't teaching their kids language, right? It's innate. It happens incidentally. So how do we get parents to understand the importance of an accessible language environment? Well, most parents know that their babies need milk. Most parents know that their babies need healthy foods, right? They know that they need that type of nutrition to support physical growth in the body. So let's talk about language in the same way. Language is literally food for the brain. Language is what provides nutrients to the brain. So it can actually grow the neural infrastructure necessary to have all of the skills to be a ready learner.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right. So when we're thinking about the construction of the basic brain infrastructure, it actually begins before birth. It begins in the uterus, but it continues all the way through adulthood, with the most prolific growth happening when - anybody? You didn't know this was going to be a quiz, right? When does the most prolific brain development happen? Yes, I saw it in the back - first three years of life. All of you early intervention folks, you are the ones who are helping us help parents build their baby's brains. Without accessible language, brains do not grow in an optimal fashion, and what does this affect? Think about a learner - yes it affects their ability to use language, but what also might that affect? I'm going to give you a little bit of a clue - what hangs out here in that prefrontal cortex, yes? Executive functioning - if your students cannot regulate their behavior, if your students cannot engage in sustained attention, specifically for those kids who are using a visual language, if they can't sustain their language, their attention long enough to see what you are signing to them, how do they engage effectively in instruction, right? So we need to provide our parents the information, the skills, and the empowerment they need to understand that language is food for the brain, and it doesn't care what language it's exposed to as long as it can eat it up. As long as it can access it, the brain will use that language to create neural infrastructure to create neural synapsis. What else drives brain development? What else drives brain development? Well, experience - sensory experiences, senses - vision, hearing, taste, smells, touch. But what helps us mediate or understand those sensory experiences? Communication, and communication is reciprocal. So we have this term around communication that we say serve and return - serve and return. So when a parent serves language to a baby or a young child they are expecting reciprocity. They are expecting that baby to volley - to return that serve of language. What happens if there's a disconnect between the parents’ serve of language and the baby's return or lack of return back? What happens? Anybody want to take a gander? Yes, that's exactly right. She says parents stop. So there is a researcher - he's at the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta - his name is Dr. Ami Klin, and he talks about a study that was done with parents of children who are showing characteristics of autism, or who have been diagnosed with autism, and there's this beautiful graph he shows where there's a line that shows parents initiations of communication exchanges or language, and those parent communications. That line graph goes up up up up up up up up up, but then there's another line that shows the child's attempts at that response to that parents’ communication, what do you think that line looks like? I'm kind of giving the answer away with my hands, sorry. That's what happens when you're a TOD. So when the child's responses - when the parent is not receiving that reciprocity from the child, what do you think happens to that line graph? Yes, it hits an inflection point, and then boom! It goes straight down, and parents stop initiating communication exchanges with their child when they don't get that reciprocal return. How many of you have engaged in a conversation with your spouse, and they're not talking back to you, and you're like, hello? This is your turn? You're supposed to be saying something back to me? Right. Now - right, that is what human language is about. That is what communication is about. It's bidirectional. Come on, talk back to me, sign back to me, that is the motivating feature that keeps that volley of communication going back and forth and back and forth, and so without that return, we see parents not on purpose or intentionally choosing not to communicate with their babies, but they're not getting that - motivating that reciprocal response necessary to keep that volley going back and forth. All right, so we have to figure out - yes - how to get our parents to understand language nutrition, but we also have to teach them how to provide accessible language for their children, because talking to a baby who is profoundly deaf is not providing that baby with accessible language, right? But a lot of our parents don't know ASL, so we really have to start thinking about how do we support our families in being able to provide that language nutrition? Providing that environment that is linguistically accessible?
[New slide: “Early Brain Development: Neural Connections” Text below: “The brain grows more in the first three years of life than at any other time. 1 million new neural connections form every second.” Image below shows a double curve chart, “Human Brain Development”. The blue curve represents “sensory pathways: vision, hearing” and the red curve represents “higher cognitive function”. There is a shaded pink area where the two curves overlap, marked “language”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: We've talked about this. The first three years of life exponential growth, it is absolutely explosive if a baby is in a linguistically accessible environment, and they are accessing the minimum number of hours of language, and we actually know what it is. We know that the brain needs a minimum of hours a week of optimal - of accessible language hours a week - of accessible language is what a baby's brain needs to grow in an optimal fashion. Well, if you divide that by seven days, we're talking about five hours of accessible language a day, that feels a little doable, right? I'm a parent of a child who's deaf, and I'm like, okay, I can do this. When I thought I had to provide language hours a day - even when I was sleeping, that felt a little overwhelming - how can I do this? I already feel like I'm failing before I even get started, but if somebody sat down with me and said, hey I know you're learning ASL for your child. I know you're also learning how to keep a cochlear implant on her. I know you're learning all of these new things, and you're completely overwhelmed. But we can do this. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do we teach our children language five hours a day? Give them five hours a day of accessible language, and they are getting what they need - the brain is getting the language nutrition it needs to be able to develop in an optimal fashion, and then we have learners coming to school where that prefrontal cortex - all of that good stuff that happens around executive functioning, it is actually functioning.
>> Dr. Tucci: So I am not standing on my head and turning upside down and laying on the floor trying to get that kid to look at me for at least a second, right? They can do that. They can engage in that sustained attention because I've been giving the brain the nutrition it needs through that accessible language.
[New slide: “Early Brain Development - Neuron Pruning”. Text below: “After this period of explosive growth, a process called neural pruning which allows brain circuits to become more efficient by eliminating the unused or weak connections.” Image below shows three images of brain activity: birth, 6 years old, 14 years old, with the most activity taking place on the 6 years old image.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So how does the brain actually grow? When we're talking about language access? Well if you have a baby, and let's say a cat runs across the the carpet, you point to the cat, and you say cat, and if that brain takes in that term cat, it grows a neural connection, or you sign cat, that brain takes in the sign for cat, it grows a neural connection, and the more and more and more you push in that terminology, you push in that language, more and more and more neural connections grow, and if we're talking about optimal brain development, we're talking about million neural connections growing every second in the first two to three years of life. So it is incredibly prolific growth, but over time the brain transitions into a phase called neural pruning - is anybody familiar with this phenomenon? Okay, okay.
>> Dr. Tucci: So let's say the brain has five neural synapses - five neural pathways where it goes to retrieve this idea or concept of cat, okay? And I'm using five - there are probably five million, but I only have five fingers on my hand, so that's what I'm going to use so I can make the model a little easier. Over time the brain says I have five ways to get to cat, but this is the way that I use most often, and so it's become the most efficient pathway to retrieve that conceptual knowledge, all right? So the brain says hey I don't need this neural connection. I don't need this one, this one, this one, and it prunes itself so that it can function in a more efficient way. So if we're talking about a typically developing brain, neural pruning is a good thing. We want it. It makes the brain more efficient, but talk to me about what happens when we get to the neural pruning stage - if we are talking about a brain that did not grow in an optimal way, that did not have enough language? There are two big things that kind of happen - anybody want to call it out? What was it? Over here? Yes, you're exactly right.
>> Dr. Tucci: So let's say this brain has only been exposed enough to this language around cat to develop one neural connection, but because there's not a lot of access and exposure to language, this neural connection doesn't get used very often even though it's the only one. It doesn't get used very often. Well, the brain doesn't know that the reason it's not being used is because of a lack of access, right? The brain presupposes access to language, so it goes, hey? Even though you've got that one connection, you're never driving down that path, or you're only driving down that path every six months, right? And so it says, hey you must not need that neural connection, and it prunes it, and so even though we may have developed, as you said, language capacity, the neural pruning phase can actually result in a loss of language capacity. But it also results in what is permanent brain damage - once you prune a neural connection, that connection never grows back. Now, don't don't freak out. You can still grow neural connections, you're growing neural connections all the way until you pass onto the other side, right? We are - we are developing neural connections throughout our life, but we are not taking advantage of that optimal time period when neural growth can happen. If we are looking at neural development after the first three years of - first three years of life, okay? So not only do we see a brain grow less neural connections, but those neural connections are more vulnerable to pruning because they are not used very often, so they are not very strong. The brain doesn't know why, and it prunes them.
>> Dr. Tucci: So when you are working with students who have experienced a lack of access to early language, yes you need to be teaching them language. But what else should we be writing IEP goals about executive functioning. Executive functioning skills are necessary for children to use language to be learners. So we should not only be looking at how we are addressing those language needs, but we also have to be thinking about how we are addressing those brain based needs around executive functioning. So we should be looking at sustained attention, we should be looking at behavioral regulation, we should be looking at an understanding of cause and effect of language-based and behavioral response - all of these things impact a child who has not accessed enough language in the early years. It's not enough to look at language, you also have to look at executive functioning.
[New slide: “Summary : Early Brain Development”. Three blocks of text below, with the top block showing an icon of a brain, the middle showing a brain inside a head, and the bottom showing an open book. Text blocks from top to bottom: “Brain architecture is comprised of billions of neural connections. These connections provide the infrastructure for communication among neurons that leads to specialization of brain functions necessary for later skills and abilities (like reading). The foundation for a literate brain is built early in a child’s life.”]
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, so in summary when we're talking about early brain development, brain architecture is comprised of billions and billions trillions and trillions of neural connections, but those connections are dependent on exposure to accessible language. These connections - they develop that infrastructure inside the brain, and that communication within the brain is what is necessary so that the brain can actually specialize. So how many of you have looked at MRI studies of students with dyslexia? Anybody familiar with the MRI studies around students with dyslexia? All right, I see some hands. I see a forced volunteer hand up in the back. So when we're looking at FMRI studies of typically developing brains reading print - a typically developing brain that is reading print proficiently. All of those brains light up in the same exact way the areas that the brain specializes and uses when you are a proficient reader. It's the same across all brains when we look at studies of students who have dyslexia, and this is why we know now that dyslexia is a brain-based disorder. Children who are reading print who have dyslexia, their brains light up atypically. They don't light up in the same areas. So that specialization did not occur, and they don't light up in the same order. Well, guess what's true for our population? The same thing. If any of you are familiar with Karen Emory, Neuroscience studies around uh deaf readers, she's at San Diego State University in California. So Karen has looked at specifically deaf ASL users brains when they are reading English print, and what she found is that if you have a native deaf ASL user and so they've given - they have this study, and they've given native deaf ASL users reading assessments, and they've used the scores on those reading assessments to group the deaf participants into a proficient reader category and a non-proficient reader category, and then they did MRI scans on these participants’ brains as they were reading, and what they found is that even deaf native users of ASL when they are reading English print proficiently, their brains are lighting up in the same areas - the specialization for proficient word reading - reading words for meaning. It's the same, even when we have readers who are using a visual language and translating between a visual language and a print language. For those native deaf ASL users who are not reading proficiently, their brains light up in an atypical fashion, not exactly like a brain that may have dyslexia, but similar in that that scan shows an atypical processing of print.
>> Dr. Tucci: So what we know is that there's something about the way brains process print that is similar across all brains. That specialization is the same regardless of the language of instruction or languages of instruction. Now, the onus is on us to figure out what is the appropriate instruction for this individual learner. Deaf / hard of hearing children can learn to read. They can be proficient readers. They can be proficient writers if we give them language early that's accessible, and if we provide them instruction in an accessible language, that meets their unique needs. Deaf and hard of hearing kids can - they can as long as we do the work to help them get there.
[New slide: “The Science of Reading”. Infographic shows text in blocks under “What it IS”: A collection of research (Research over time, from multiple fields of study using methods that confirm and disconfirm theories on how children best learn to read); Teaching Based on the 5 Big Ideas (Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency); Ever Evolving (There is new research and evidence all the time. As populations , communities, and approaches evolve, so should practice).”]
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, so I feel like I've kind of given you a sales pitch, and so we're gonna switch a little bit. So I've given you a sales pitch on the science of reading, right? So let's talk about what is the science of reading, because there is a lot of concern about this state level legislation - this trend that's sweeping the nation. We have just passed an early literacy law in my home state of Georgia. My little sister is a teacher in Alabama. They've passed an early literacy law. You guys have passed an early literacy law, and that's great! It's incredible that we are now intentionally addressing what we know as a literacy crisis in this country, but what does that mean for special populations? What does the science of reading look like for a child that doesn't access spoken phology right? So let's talk a little bit about what the science of reading is. It is essentially a body of research full stop. It is ever evolving. So what you knew about the science of reading years ago, two years ago, six months ago, in some cases may be different, right? Because the research continues to evolve, and as we start to work in partnership with neuroscientists and as we start to look at FMI studies, we start to figure out more and more and more what the science of reading is. But it is elusive because it is just that - a body of research, and that research is used to develop a framework around how we teach children to read.
[New slide “The Science of Reading” infographic continued, with “What it is NOT”: A program, an intervention, or a product that you can buy; Phonics-based programs that drill phonic skills; compete and no more study needs to be done”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: But what it is not - it's not a - it's not a
Product. It's not a curriculum. It's not an intervention. It's not a two-day training that you can go to. It's not a strategy - a set of strategies that you can purchase off of the internet. It's not a thing that I can just give a teacher and say go do this. It's a framework that builds out the skills that are necessary for a brain to become a reading brain - for a brain to become a proficient brain, and that's why I think it has been elusive for us in education to kind of figure out how -how do we do this, and how do we make this work for diverse learners?
[New slide: “National Reading Panel’s “Big 5” Essential Components to Reading Instruction”. Numbered text below: 1. Explicit Instruction in Phonemic Awareness 2. Systematic Instruction in Phonics 3. Fluency 4. Vocabulary 5. Comprehension (Reading Connected Text) 6. LANGUAGE!
>> Dr. Tucci: So the science of reading is essentially based on the national reading panel's Big Five. This has been around for decades - are you guys familiar with the big five? Some of you may be, some of you may not, so take a look at these components, talk to me about what's problematic about some of these components - about some of these components? When we're talking about students who are deaf and hard of hearing, you're exactly right - the first two are sound-based. So even if we're talking about students who are using listening and spoken language, there are still barriers around complete access to the spoken phonological system of English. So what do we do for those first two components phonemic awareness and phonics?
>> Dr. Tucci: What do we do? What about kids who use ASL? Children who are not using amplification? Children who are using a visual language? What does phonology look like for those kids? Do we just not teach it? What fills in the gap if we don't teach spoken phonology - if we don't teach phonics, what do we do instead? Do we do nothing? Is language enough? So that's starting to be what the field is looking at, trying to answer these questions for our special population. Talk to me about fluency - what does fluency look like for a child who's using two instructional languages? Should we expect the same fluency rates for users who have a single instructional language? No, it's going to take the brain more time to read English print translated into ASL in a conceptually accurate way so we can gauge comprehension. So we're going to look for fluency rates that are a little bit slower, but slower doesn't mean less Z - slower means it's a more complex task. So it takes the brain more time to facilitate that comprehension and output it in a way that we call fluent. So we can't always map on what we've determined for unilingual hearing students. We can't always map those benchmarks onto our students who are deaf and hard of hearing, particularly if we're talking about students who are using American Sign Language.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right we have vocabulary - boy, we know how to teach vocabulary, indeed! We can move the needle on vocabulary like it's nobody's business, but what I'm going to challenge you - I'm going to skip over comprehension for a moment. I'm going to challenge you that for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, we don't have a big five. We have a big six. We have a big six, and our big six is language, because my statistician friends who I love so much - they always joke with me, Stacey, vocabulary is a cheap proxy for language - just because you are moving the needle on isolated vocabulary, that does not mean that you are moving the needle on language. Vocabulary is the egg in the language cake. I don't know about you, but raw eggs don't taste as good as carrot cake. So if all I'm serving to my students is isolated vocabulary, I'm doing them a disservice. I'm not actually teaching them language, and let me give you a quick little example. Let's say we ask a student to learn high frequency words in isolation - we all know we do it. That's perfectly okay - sight word recognition is something that is a part of the science of reading, and word recognition strategies. But let's say we're looking at high frequency word recognition, and we give the student the word with wi? All right, if they're using spoken language, what are we defining that word as - what's our child-friendly definition for the word with yes to go together to a company? That's probably what we are going to tell that student what it means, and then if we are teaching this to a student who's using American Sign Language, how are we defining with what are we signing for with? Yeah, yep, we're probably doing this - doing this - that's exactly right.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, great. So let's say we give this student the sentence, I am eating dinner with my mom. I am eating dinner with my mom, and we're gonna - we're gonna assume that this student can decode or read through sight every one of those words, I am eating dinner with my mom. What does that kid see in their mind's eye? If they comprehend that sentence, what are they visualizing? I see it back there. Yep, so there's a table, right? Mom is on one side, maybe the student is on the other side, and they are eating dinner together. It all fits. It works great. Now, if I change a single word in that sentence, I am eating dinner with my spoon, and the only definition of wi that you taught your students, because you taught that word in isolation, not in context at the language level, or the phrase level is with. Now, what does that kid see in their mind's eye when they read that sentence? There is literally a ginormous spoon sitting on the other side of the table eating dinner, right? And the child is looking at you like what is this? Why are you asking me to read this? Right, and they either internalize I have no idea what this is, and because it makes me not feel good because I don't know what this is. I don't want to do it anymore because guys used to - there was a big six in the national reading panel for reading skills. It was motivation, and they took it out because no one really knows how to teach motivation in an explicit manner. All right, it is elusive, but what I would suggest to you is, motivation comes from success. When we set deaf and hard of hearing children up for success, when it comes to reading, that success motivates them to keep reading when we set them up for failure, and that's not an accusation. That's just a statement. When we set them up for failure with inaccessible or ineffective instruction, that failure demotivates them from reading.
>> Dr. Tucci: So it's on us whether these kids become proficient readers or not. It's on us. So when we are thinking about the big five, I beg you to please, add in that big six,and understand that vocabulary is not language. I's the egg in the language cake, but the comprehension of language is at the phrase level, which means we have to teach at the phrase level, the noun phrase level, the verb phrase level, the prepositional phrase level, right? We have to teach connected language - it's easy to move isolated vocabulary. It's a lot harder to move connected language, but that is the necessary component.
[New slide: “Simple View of Reading” An infographic below, with three blocks of text left to right: “Word Recognition” x “Language Comprehension” = “Reading Comprehension”. Below the blocks are three math equations with each number under its block: 1 x 1 = 1; 1 x 0 = 0; 0 x 1 = 0”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: When we are thinking about the simple view of reading, how many of you are familiar with the simple view of reading? Yes? Okay so it has been around for a long time, and what this says is, there are two major domains - skill domains that children have to master if they're going to become proficient readers. So look at that first equation - look at that first equation, the one represents mastery in that skill domain. So when students have mastered word recognition strategies when they've mastered language comprehension strategies, those two skills work together. So that they become competent readers - let's move down to the second equation - what's happening in that second equation? I tend to call these kids word callers or whiplash finger spellers, right? You give these students connected text, and they can read it beautifully because they can decode, and they have a large sight word lexicon, or you give a student who's using American Sign Language a reading pass message. They've got a lot of sight word recognition, and they can also finger spell like nobody's business. They've got letter handshape correspondence, and boy, they're going through that passage, and they're giving me sight words, and they're giving me finger spelled words, and then I go to ask a reading comprehension question, and what happens? That's exactly right. They're clueless. They are clueless, they look at you like a horn just screw out of the middle of your head, excuse me, what? Because comprehension comes from language knowledge.
>> Dr. Tucci: So it's great if you're teaching decoding. It's great if you're teaching phonemic awareness and phonics, but that's not enough. You got to have the language to understand what those words mean in that particular connected order, all right? Now, let's go down to the bottom equation. What's happening here? We have a kid who has bang up language, they can chat with you all day long. They can tell you what happened three weeks ago at home, when they went on a field trip, or when they went on a field trip and somebody lost their shoe, and then the bus broke, right? They can tell you all kinds of things. It's amazing, but you put some text in front of those students, and they fall apart because they don't have word recognition strategies, or they have one word recognition strategy, which is what - what are we doing indeed? When we are talking about word recognition, what strategy are we typically teaching? We are teaching sight word memorization at the isolated vocabulary level. That is exactly right. Guess what, guys? A typically developing brain can only learn to words through sight word memorization a year - a typically developing brain can only learn through to words a year through sight word memorization, because essentially that's what sight word recognition is. It's memorization of the Gestalt memorization of the whole word. Now, I don't - I'm not a math in my head person, but if somebody wants to pull their phone out, and let's go with the upper threshold of multiple years. I'm going to say - I'm just going to say k to 5th grade years somebody multiply by what is it? Can it ?
>> Dr. Tucci: Again, how are our kids ever going to learn to read if the only word recognition strategy that we are giving them limits them across their entire educational career to less than words in print? It's not - it's not going to work, and that's why we're not moving the needle on literacy for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. We have to figure out how to give them the other strategy - what's the other strategy?
[New slide: “Many Strands are Woven into Skilled Reading”. Infographic below shows a deconstructed rope with a list of terminology on the left side under “Language comprehension” with a strand next to the term. The strands intertwined together to a rope on the right side, “Skilled Reading”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: Take a look at this graphic - what's the other strategy? It's decoding - it's decoding. So this is Scarborough's reading rope - are you guys familiar with Scarborough’s reading rope? This is one of the singular most important reading graphics. If you are responsible for moving - reading with any child, you should have this printed out and literally tattooed on your forehead, honestly. It is that important ,because what it does is, it takes the next step from the simple view of reading and it starts to help us operationalize. Okay, great, so they need word recognition strategies, yeah it's fine that you tell me that is a total domain, but what does that actually mean for the skills I'm supposed to teach? Great, you tell me they need to know language? Okay, but what about language? So what Scar's reading rope does is, it takes those domains, and it breaks out subskills, and those subskills are little - little tiny threads within a broader rope that then twists together, and helps provide the foundation for proficient reading. All right, so we do an okay job with a lot of these subskills in language comprehension - where do we get tripped up? There's one - there's one subskill - if you look at the red part of the rope, that those language comprehension skills, there's one label there that trips us up a little bit in Deaf Ed -what is it? Yep, yep, you got it, yes verbal reasoning. Just take out the word verbal and put the word language verbal reasoning - just means language-based reasoning. It means through the air language-based reasoning. So if the through the air language is verbal, great. If the through the air languages, signed, that's great too, it's signed reasoning -verbal reasoning, signed reasoning, it's just language based reasoning not including print. All right, it's through the air reasoning - through the air cognition. All right, if you will but when we start to look at that word recognition domain, that's when things start falling apart, right.
>> Dr. Tucci: Because what are the first two sub skills based on? Sounds. Sounds, and so it's not that we've been doing a bad thing relative to the research when we focused on word recognition, it does follow Scarborough's reading rope. It's just that idea around access that our kids can't access phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, our kids can't access decoding because that's based on sound - symbol letter - sound correspondence - a lot of what we've been doing in the field is just kicking those skills out. Because we're like, they can't access them, so let me just focus on the one skill that they can access, but that is a limiting skill, and we are seeing the results in the literacy levels and the literacy rates of our students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and this is true. Even if we're talking about kids who are using listening and spoken language and amplification, okay? So what are we going to do about it? Has anybody shared any research to help us figure out what's the next step?
[New slide: “DHH Learners & Reading” Text below: Do Deaf and hard of hearing students learn to read differently than their hearing peers?” Yes and no.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So I'm asking you this question - I'm posing this question to you: do deaf and hard of hearing students learn to read differently than their hearing peers? That's exactly right. It depends. The answer is a very complex, yes, and no. It depends on the learner profile. It depends on the child. It depends on the child.
[New slide: “DHH Literacy National Study (K-2)”. Three text blocks in a row below, left to right: “Unimodal Unilingual: auditory access to spoken language, communicates using speech, listening and spoken language (LSS), likely to use amplification devices = Ears only”; “Bimodal Bilingual: auditory access to spoken language, communicates using speech and sign language, speech and sign simultaneously (sign-supported English) and/or true language separation = Eyes & Ears”; “Unimodal Bilingual: no auditory access to spoken language, communicates using sign language, American Sign Language, English typically accessed through print = Eyes only”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So this is an incredible study, I call it the best study that nobody ever read because it was published in and then the world went into one of the most profound experiences we've ever had, right? With the pandemic and so a lot of us were not really using that time at home to read research article, so it is a wonderful study. You should definitely check it out. So this was a national study that looked at deaf and hard of hearing children across the United States in grades K through 5th grade - the sample was approximately a little under students, okay? Sample a little under three okay. Oh B is - it - oh it's B. Okay don't make me hold a mic. I'm gonna like - you know - punch myself in the face with it because I can't make my hands not stop moving.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, so what the study did is, it looked at students deaf and hard of hearing all over the United States in every conceivable classroom placement you could think of. So these were kids at state schools for the deaf, these were children in uh self-contained classrooms, children who were in inclusion classrooms, children who were served by full-time TODs, children who were served by interpreters, children who were served by itinerant TODs, the whole shebang. They're all in this sample and what the researchers found, is that there are three main learner profiles in deaf Ed. When we are thinking about the instructional languages that the children are using, so when I talk through these learner profiles, please know that there may be other languages going on - perhaps spoken Spanish in the home for example, because that language is not being used as an instructional language in the classroom. Those languages are not included in these learner profiles, okay? Now this is going to evolve - this is an initial study. I already know the kids in the middle are going to end up splitting out into two separate learner profiles, okay? And we're going to talk through it in just a second, but just know - this is an initial study. It's an initial step to start thinking about who are these children, and what does their profile tell us - their learner profile tell us about how we teach them to read? Specifically how we teach them those phonological and phonics components of reading, okay? So the first learner profile they called unimodal unilingual - one mode of through the air language spoken, one instructional language English all right? These kids have auditory access to spoken language and spoken phology they are communicating through the speech mode. We often call them LSL kids listening in spoken language and they are almost always using amplification.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, I as a teacher am not going to walk around and call kids unimodal unilingual, so my simplistic label for these students are ears only kids. Yes, I understand that students use - who are using the auditory pathway are also gaining information about language through the visual pathway, but when we are thinking about these learner profiles in support of the phonological and phonics strategies, we are going to use - they are primarily accessing those strategies through their ears, okay? So I'm calling these kids ears only kids. I'm going to skip the kids in the - in the middle for a moment because they're a little messy, and we'll talk about those kids in a second.
>> Dr. Tucci: Let's go to the other end of this learner profile continuum - the researchers identified these students as unimodal bilingual students, so they are using one mode of language through the air, the signed mode, but they are learning two languages. They are learning ASL and English, okay? These students do not have auditory access to spoken language or spoken phonology. They are communicating through the signed mode - they are using American Sign Language. ASL kids and they are typically accessing English through print, okay? I call these kids eyes only kids, all right? Now let's go to the students in the middle - bimodal bilingual students - these are students who are using two modes of through the air language - the spoken mode and- the spoken mode and the signed mode, and they are also learning two languages ASL and English, okay? Okay, but there are really two subsets within this learner profile, all right? The first subset is far more rare - in fact, I call them magical unicorns because I can't really say that I've met more than maybe one or two in my entire years in deaf Ed. These are students who are true bilingual bimodal kids who are using language separation, so they are using hands down spoken English voice voice off ASL.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, so true bilingual bimodal users language separation is happening. We are talking about equity of use between the two languages. We are talking about real ASL, all right? We are talking about real spoken language - spoken English. We're not talking about the use of those languages simultaneously, okay? So true language separation magical unicorn kids - don't really see a lot of those kids out there in the world, okay? Then the second subset of this learner profile - those are the children that we see most often - anybody want to take a gander at who they are? Yeah, so these kids are what we used to call simultaneous communication kids - we might SimCom kids - we might also be calling them TC or Total Communication kids, but essentially that's really facilitating a myth about the use of languages, all right? Because the brain cannot process two languages simultaneously even if you are an amazing bilingual user, there is still a period even if it's a tenth of a millisecond, there is still a period within the brain that a transition happens between ASL and spoken English. So the brain does not not process two languages simultaneously - so simultaneous communication is sort of we kind of need to get rid of that. We sort of need to kick it to the curb and really, what we're doing most often not % because there's really nothing % in human population studies, right? What we are really doing when we are talking about simultaneous communication is most often the lead language is the spoken language - that's the majority language, and we are supporting access to that majority - that spoken language through a tagging of ASL signs, or ASL constructs, okay? And so essentially what we are doing is sign supported English, all right? And that's where a lot of the kids in this learner profile live.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, and there's there's a lot to talk about - to unpack with these learner profiles because a lot of what these learner profiles are really telling us is the artifact of exposure to language, not for the kids in the middle because they've been exposed to two languages and oftentimes the initial language that they were exposed to was probably a spoken language along with amplification. A lot of what we're seeing in this middle learner profile is the result of exposure to language. It's an artifact of exposure, it may not be exactly their correct profile. Does that make sense? All right, right so I call these students eyes and ears students. So we have these three main learner profiles, all right? As this research line evolves, we're going to get more and more and more and more nuanced around these learner profiles, but this is a great place to start. So what these researchers wanted to know, is what do these learner profiles tell us about phonology and phonics, and they focus primarily on phonology in this study. So what do you think for the eyes and ears kids, are we going to be using the traditional sound based approach to phonology, or is there something qualitatively different going to happen for these students? Yep, yep, we're gonna - we're gonna - we're going to use a sound-based approach, but there are going to be differences in how those kids access that sound based approach, right? We need to know what their audiogram looks like. We need to lay that audiogram over the speech banana and figure out what spoken phones are going to be problematic.
>> Dr. Tucci: When I teach letter sound correspondents and then they use that letter sound correspondence to read words in English print. So there are going to be some differences for ears on kids when it comes to phonological instruction, but it is going to look more similar to the traditional approach. What about these kids?
[The yellow “Ears only” panel disappears.]
>> Dr. Tucci: What does phonology look like for these kids? Do they even use phonology? All right.
[New slide: “DHH Literacy National Study (K-2) - Reading”. Underneath are two score charts, “Bimodal-Auditory Access” on the left, and “Unimodal-Signs Only” on the right. The left panel shows “Eyes & Ears” below the chart, and the right shows “Eyes only” below the chart. Both charts share line items in reading, phonological - fingerspelling, and phonological - spoken with scored numbers on each row. The right side “Eyes only” does not have the phonological - spoken category. The category block for “reading” is outlined in red.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So the researchers got really really lucky - it was like the research Angels came down from heaven, because when they grouped these students in these learner profiles, they had almost exactly the same number of students in every profile - about students were in each learner profile group. So they gave the students subtest from the Woodcock Johnson, all right? So they gave letter word ID from WJ, they gave passage comprehension and fluency, all right? So they gave these three subtests from the Woodcock Johnson - look at the scores between these two learner profiles on these subtest. Yes, there is no statistically significant difference between the eyes and ears kids, and the eyes only kids, and not only is there not a statistically significant difference, they're performing relatively well, because if you know stats, anything, that's a five or higher means there was an effect, and the closer you get to one, the greater the effect. So these kids were killing it on these three subtests on the Woodcock Johnson. So not only do we have equal numbers in these learner profile cohorts, but we have equal performance at the beginning of this research. All right, super cool. This rarely happens, so they said. All right. Now we've got equivalent groups, let's look at phonology.
[The Phonological / Fingerspelling category is now outlined in red.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So they gave a phonological assessment through a visual phonological approach, and when we're talking about visual phonology, we mean finger spelling. We are leveraging the phonology of finger spelling. This is an honor to the child's first language. It is following best practice when we're thinking about students who are learning two languages - English language learners, we lead with the L. We use that L capacity to then support understanding in the Lso, they assessed these students using what's called the shik - s c i c k -the shik visual phonological assessment, that is Dr Brenda Scick, she's out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with her work. She's done - she's done tons of research around the use of interpreters in the educational setting, and also tons of research around the use of finger spelling in the educational setting with students who are using American Sign Language. So she developed a visual phonological assessment. Unfortunately, it's not commercially available, but we may get to that. We may get to building a visual phonological assessment. I'm hoping some of the incredibly Innovative work you're doing in Minnesota may - may make a space for that. So what they did is, they looked at these learner profiles performance on two subtest within this visual phonological assessment - the first is blending - okay, so I'm going to show you what blending looks like through the spoken approach, and then I'm going to show you what blending looks like through visual - through the visual phonological approach.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, so if we were talking about blending through the sound based approach, I would say something like, hey listen I'm gonna say some sounds, you smooth the sounds together, and tell me the word you hear, and then I would say C at, what word do you hear, and what do I hope that child says back to me? Cat, that's exactly right. All right, so that's the traditional sound-based approach to blending. Okay now I want to show you two ways that you can blend through Visual phonology.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, so the first way I'm going to show you is the - is the method that they used in the Scick visual phonological assessment, and then the second way is my preferred way as a teacher.
[She adds ASL while speaking, spelling out the letters.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So I'm going to show you both of those, okay? All right, look at me. I'm going to tell you the letters. I'll show you the letters, you watch and then you spell it back to me, okay? Here we go - see e a t, tell me what that word is, okay? Spell it out, tell me what it is. Yes okay, sorry, I just totally - I'm always in trouble with the interpreters - all right. So I saw a lot of people give me cat through fingerspelling, yes that is the response I'm looking for, but I saw other people give me cat as the sign. Why am I - well first off - if I do this and the kid gives me the sign for cat, I'm going to fall on the floor and say hallelujah, right? Because they have fingerspelling sign chain in their cognitive lexicon, holy moly! That's amazing, right? I want to develop an internal lexicon for my kids who are using ASL. That's not just signs - yes they need a sign lexicon - but what is the only component of ASL that Maps directly onto English print? His finger spelling. So if you are teaching vocabulary to your students using ASL, and you are only building a vocabulary lexicon through sign, you're only doing half the work. You have to be building a finger spelling lexicon in addition to the sign lexicon because the finger spelling is how we're going to decode English print. We're going to use it as a word recognition strategy. We're going to fade it over time, but that is the key to giving deaf ASL users a word recognition strategy in addition to sight word memorization. We're going to leverage that visual phonology. We're going to leverage that visual phology of fingerspelling to build a strategy that allows kids to use their finger spelling lexicon to decode words in English print. All right so initially what I am looking at - what I am wanting the student to give back to me when you are thinking phonology for deaf students - when you are thinking visual phonology, you're thinking fingerspelling, fingerspelling, fingerspelling, fingerspelling. Now if the kid gives me cat cat, awesome, because - sorry, if the kid gives me the finger spelling for cat, and they chain it to the sign for cat, that's my decoding chain. That's my decoding chain ,and now I know it in the - they know it in the Lso. I teach them letter handshape correspondence. They apply that symbol letter, right? That fingerspelling handshape letter correspondence, they apply that to English print and they can use that chain as a decoding strategy.
>> Dr. Tucci: I don't know if we'll get to that this afternoon or in this presentation, because I always put too much in the presentation, but so that's how they did blending through visual phonology - when I am teaching this approach to students who are using ASL, I do something like this - I'm going to show you three letters, you put them together and finger spell the word c a t. What is that finger spell? The word? Your turn.
[She returns to speaking.]
>> Dr. Tucci: Perfect, so the listing technique - the listening technique acts as a graphic organizer, or a visual organizer to help our students start to do that word play that phon - that visual phon play through fingerspelling. It's a - wait - when I do this, when I just finger spell cat, and I finger spell it fluently, and I say, hey finger spell it back to me, and the kid looks at me and they're like T, right? Because that last letter is the most salient feature - it's the last one they saw, and they're like okay, T. I don't know, and then I get teachers doing this copy copy copy, and then the kid goes C, and then the teacher does a copy copy copy, and the kid does A, and then the teacher does T, and the kid does T? Well that's not finger spelling the word cat, that's copying a chain of letters. So what I want to do is help students build that finger reading, right? That's what the Gallaudet K standards call receptive fingerspelling. They now call it finger reading and productive finger spelling is finger spelling. So if I'm talking about intaking finger spelling, receptive fingerspelling, it's finger reading, and if I'm talking about productive fingerspelling is just fingerspelling, okay? So if I can use that listing technique, it provides an organizer for the visual information that the kids are thinking about, all right? Then that allows me to push in to some really cool strategies around word patterning specifically around onset and rhyme patterning, right?
>> Dr. Tucci: So when we - when we use this in general education we talk about the first sound is C in cat right?
[She adds sign while speaking.]
>> Dr. Tucci: We say take away the C add a B, what's the new word? The word is bat, right? So we do this phony manipulation, but we do it around word families that have the same onset - I'm sorry the same rhyme. so it looks something like this c a t, first letter is C, what's the rhyme? What are the last two letters? It's at or a t. So if we take away the C and add B, what word do we have? Now we have bat. What if we replace it with an M, what do we have? What if we put TH there instead? Wow, right?
[She returns to speaking.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So when we start to teach finger spelling first, we're teaching it through a more isolated visual phon representation as students build their finger spelling capacity, then we start getting more sophisticated, we start looking at patterning within the word. Initially we're looking at three-letter words. CVC words. We're looking at the onset which initially is one letter, but as we get more sophisticated, the onset can be two letters, and then we're looking at the rhyme of those - that last chunk of the end? Well if we're teaching kids finger spelling through that onset rhyme patterning, not only are we helping them to organize that visual fingerspelling information up there in that finger spelling lexicon, but it allows us to use commercially available early decodable readers, because commercially available early decode early decodable readers use words that are in a word family that use an onset rhyme patterning. So we are using and honoring the L-1 of the student. We are giving them accessible language. We are filling in that word recognition domain where they've been suffering through sight word memorization for years and years and years, but we are also using instruction that is socially valid when that child engages in the general education classroom, or with general education instruction, because the same decodable reader that this student would iCal hearing is using is the one that my student who deaf hard of hearing is using, and so there's - there's collaboration there, but there's still honor in looking at the language, and the accessibility for that student who is using ASL. All right, so then the researchers looked at Elion, and I've kind of already previewed that but if we're talking about Elion that is phon or sound manipulation.
>> Dr. Tucci: So if we are doing that through the sound based approach, it would sound something like this - listen the word is cat, take away C, add B, what's the new word? And the student would say bat. Elion is one of the most predictive phonemic awareness skills when it comes to a student's ability to read to code. It's one of the things that we look at particularly when we start to look at phonics and print is there phony manipulation is really really important. So if we are doing that through fingerspelling, it would look something like this:
[She adds sign to her speaking.]
>> Dr. Tucci: we have the word cat, three letters c a t, take away the C, add p, what word do we have? That's exactly right. Pat. Perfect, perfect.
[She returns to speaking.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So essentially every skill that we teach through phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness. Every skill that we teach through phonemic awareness in the traditional sound based approach. We can teach to our students who use ASL if we leverage finger spelling so the S of reading can in fact be an effective framework for all of our students who are deaf and hard of hearing. If we do the work to make sure that we are providing accessible instruction that honors the first language of that student. Okay, now look at the scores between these two learner profiles on the visual phonological assessment. So that's the red box right. I've tried to highlight where on this table we're talking about. Okay, so talk to me about that the scores are over five for both sub skills for both learner profiles. So what that tells us is eyes and ears kids benefit from visual phonology, students who have access to spoken phonology and maybe using spoken language in addition to ASL, those kids benefit from from finger spelling phonology from visual phonology, but look at the eyes only kids - look at the scores. Kids in that Eyes Only learner profile, they make a ton of benefit from visual phonology deaf students use phonology - they just use the phonology of finger spelling. We're honoring their language. We're honoring the L1. We're saying, hey it's not that you don't learn this skill, it's that you learn it through a different approach, but you still use phonology when we are talking about literacy instruction for students who are deaf and use ASL.
[The bottom category, “Phonological - spoken” is outlined in red, with an arrow leading to “Phonological - fingerspelling” under the Eyes only panel.]
>> Dr. Tucci: So last but not least - last, but not least, they did not give the spoken phonological assessment to our students who use American Sign Language, okay? They did give those subtests through spoken phonology to the eyes and the ears students - look at their scores, what this study tells us is that, if you are working with student students who are eyes and ears students - so bilingual bimodal students - what we know is that those students benefit from two approaches to phonology. They benefit from a visual phonological approach that leverages finger spelling, and they benefit from a spoken phonological approach. However, as a group, right? Because this is a group design here as a group, eyes and ears kids benefit more from spoken phonology than they do from visual phonology as a group. Remember, there are going to be individual differences inside that group, and I do believe that there are probably some ASL kids hanging out in that sign - in that sign supported English or that Eyes Only eyes and ears m learner profile, right? And those - those kids who are really ASL kids but are sort of misrile filed if you will, are probably driving up those ASL scores - those visual phonological scores within the study, okay? So if you are working with students, and you don't know exactly what their primary instructional language is, they are both they are bilingual bimodal - you should be giving them access to both phonological approaches - you should be giving them access to instruction through Visual phology, and you should be giving them access to instruction through spoken phology. Let the data tell you which approach is primary for individual students, all right? The research tells us as a group, these kids benefit from both but their primary or most beneficial approach is spoken phonology, but those scores are too high on visual phonology, to say that you shouldn't be giving visual phonology to these kids. The data should tell you you got to provide equitable instruction in both approaches, otherwise we get back into that artifact of exposure space - if you provide equitable instruction in these two approaches, the data will tell you which one is primary for the individual learner.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, the other incredible thing that this tells us is look at how much eyes and ears kids benefit from spoken phonology - that 8483 and then look at how much eyes only kids benefit from from visual phonology - 8382. So this also tells us that visual phonology finger spelling phonology carries as much weight, right? It holds as much space in this literacy instructional package as spoken phonology does for kids who are using a sound based approach. So there's way more similarity in the way that we are teaching students who are deaf and hard of hearing, then there is difference. It's about the approach and the pathway to access, right? Okay, time check - okay, so I have about 15 - about 15 minutes.
[skip slide]
[Return to slide: “National Reading Panel’s “Big 5” Essential Components to Reading”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, so maybe we'll see what's next.
[New slide: “DHH Literacy National Study (K-2)”. Two Panels underneath, left one “Bimodal Bilingual: auditory access to spoken language - Ears & Eyes” and right, “Bimodal Bilingual - No auditory access to spoken language - Eyes only”. An arrow under Eyes & Ears: “spoken phonology” with an arrow under “Eyes” “Fingerspelled phonology”.]
>> Dr. Tucci: Maybe this is a good spot to break and have a little bit of discussion, right? Let's talk a little bit about how you're putting this together - does anybody have - well, actually, we'll do this - I'll do a little bit of questioning about some visual phonological strategies relative to sound-based phonological strategies, because what we're starting to also understand with students who are using visual phonology is, while we can teach all of the skills in sound based phonology through Visual phonology, the developmental prog - the developmental sequence may be different for students who are using visual phonology than students who are using sound based phonology. So let me give you an example - generally when we are thinking about sound-based phonological awareness, what is the initial skill that we are typicAlly teaching young students phonological awareness? What's like generally the first phonological awareness skill that we teach young students who are using the sound based approach? Oh not quite …
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, phonological awareness means there's no print present, so when we are doing sound play - if you will, with young students, what's the initial - we almost always lead with this skill through phonological wise rhyming or syllable segmentation - yes, syllable segmentation. So generally rhyming and syllable segmentation are our early foundational skills through spoken phology. So I'm going to use syllable segmentation, because I already came up with a model for it, okay. So if we are segmenting the word, dinner di n n e r - if we are segmenting that at the syllable level through the sound based approach, somebody tell me how many word parts - how many syllables, and tell me what the rule is around - how you - how you break up that word?
[Dr. Tucci watches the audience member’s response.]
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, so she is correct. We have two syllables - two word parts, and what are the syllables in dinner? Yes, okay, and then spell them for me - spell the syllables in dinner - di n r, okay. Through the sound based approach, there are two syllables in dinner, and the rule for the sound based approach is, if there are double consonants in the word, the syllabic break happens between the double consonant. So if we are talking about segmenting at the syllable level for the word dinner, through spoken language approach, the segmentation rule is, you break between the double in the double consonants. So it's two word parts - two syllables, and it's DIN - NER. All right, that's the rule: the syllabic break happens between the two consonants.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, now I already saw someone answer the question to finger spelling, so I'm gonna ask it though if you are chunky, so syllable segmentation the terminology I would use with ASL kids is finger spell chunking. It's essentially syllable segmentation as well, but the terminology we're using through ASL is finger spelled chunking. All right, so if we're going to chunk at the syllable level the word dinner through Visual phonology, what are the chunks? Spell them for me, and then tell me the rule. Yes, and I saw it here too, so there are three chunks - there are three word parts, and those word parts are spelled D NN e r - what's the rule that gives us a different response?
>> Dr. Tucci: Remember these are two languages, so they have their own phonological rules sometimes - those rules are going to be in conflict with one another because one is a spoken language, and one is a Visos spatial language. So their rules are going to be different sometimes, and sometimes they be in conflict and the response will be different, so why is it d i n NE R? What's the rule about finger spelling phonology that makes - yes, yes. So when we have double letters in fingerspelling, we - what's the fancy word for that? Interpreters, don't tell - it's coarticulation - co-articulation when we have a double letter, and we are fingerspelling, we co-articulate that double letter so the in might be a slide a double n might be a slide right a double e might be a slide. So those double letters are co-articulated as a single chunk. Well that's in direct conflict with what we just talked about with spoken phonology and double consonants because it's not true for double vowels in spoken phonology.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, why do we co our articulate letters in fingerspelling? There are two reasons - yes, yes, it is a more smooth representation, right. So it's easier on the eyes when you can smooth together co- articulate those double letters - it's easier for the eyes to intake that fingerspelling of the word. It's also more efficient in terms of production on the hand, right. So what letter is this? What letters are this? Is this double z? Who wants to do this z z that takes forever? Who wants to spell Pizza that way? Nobody wants to spell Pizza that way, right. Everybody wants to spell Pizza as fast as possible, because then they can eat the pizza, right? Everybody loves pizza. So when we're thinking about double letters through fingerspelling, we co articulate those double letters for ease of receptive understanding, but also ease or efficiency in Production. Okay, we'll do one more - we'll do Rhyming.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, because you guys - this is an initial - a foundational skill too. So if we are talking about rhyming through the sound based approach, and I have the words cow c w and b b w, do those words rhyme through the spoken Phonological approach? No. Why? They're oow W and oow - they have a different sound on the end, and that's why English is so not fun to teach sometimes, because it has an opaque orthography or a deep orthography, which means sounds are spelled all kinds of different ways, right? Because we borrow a lot of words from other languages - a lot of words in English are actually - they're they originate in other languages, and so we teach a kid, this is how you spell long o, well how can you spell long o? Start calling it out. How do you spell long oooooooooo g. H yes o e uh yes, you can also have the magic e.
>> Dr. Tucci: Right, you can have o, and then a consonant, and then an e on the end, and the E is silent, and it tells you to make the long o sound, it's like holy moly! The kids are like, what you just gave me, I don't know how many times I don't know how I think - seven, eight different ways to spell this one sound. So English has a really deep orthography, and that is just a really nice way of saying a super super complex orthography. It's really hard for kids to learn that. All right, but when we are thinking about fingerspelling, this is a really really clean orthography, when we are thinking about mapping finger spelling onto English print, because when we are using finger spelling as a word recognition strategy for English print, almost all of the words that we are going to see and finger spell have a one to one correspondence. If the word is b a k you still finger spell all you still finger spell the E, right? Even though the E is silent through spoken phology, we still - we still spell the E through Visual phonology. So visual - visual phonology is very transparent. It is actually an easier skill. Kids learn letter handshape correspondence much more quickly than they learn letter sound correspondence because it is almost all - even if we don't teach co-articulated letters, right? If we hold off on that initially it is a one to one correspondence, when we are talking about fingerspelling and the letters represented on the page.
>> Dr. Tucci: So let's go back to Cow and bow - if we are fingerspelling those words, do they rhyme through Visual phonology? Yes they do, because the on set rhyme patterning - first letter last chunk Is what c w b o w - the last chunk the rhyme, last chunk is o w for both words. So they rhyme visually. Deaf users of ASL use phonology but sometimes the rules because fingerspelling is a part of ASL, it is its own language it has its own rules. Sometimes the rules are going to cause those responses to be in conflict. Now assessment has not caught up with this.
>> Dr. Tucci: All right, so we have to push this out in instruction and then we have to start ensuring that assessment follows, because when that deaf child takes that summit of assessment at the end of the third grade, and it asks them phonological awareness questions, and we've been teaching visual phonology, they're going to answer some of those questions correctly through their phonological approach, but they're going to be wrong on the assessment. So it's not enough to embed this practice in your instruction, we have to start fighting for assessment to follow.
>> Dr. Tucci: Okay, and that's where a lot of what you guys are doing in Minnesota is really Innovative around this intentional practice that you have in looking at how the read act applies to diverse learners, specifically how the read act applies to students who are deaf and hard of hearing, because liter literacy instruction is going to be different, even within the DHH population. DHH kids are not a monolith, right? There are individual learner profiles within that population, and we have to start meeting the needs of those learner profiles, not only with our instruction, but with our assessment. Okay, that's probably time to wrap it up. Okay, I don't know if there's time to offer any questions, or if we should just be done? Maybe we should just be done, because I don't know how much more my brain can actually function right now, but I'm- if we have a few - okay, okay.
[Applause]
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