1. The Effects of a Phonological Awareness Training Program on Hearing-Impaired Children Sarah J. Stewart Advisor: Dr. Ann Geers

2. Purpose To see what effects a phonological awareness training program would have on hearing- impaired children

3. What is Phonological Awareness? The understanding that words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes The ability to think about and manipulate those sounds Considered to be predictive of reading ability

4. Various Tasks Associated with Phonological Awareness 1The ability to hear sounds in words 2The ability to focus on the components of sounds in words that make them similar or different 3Blending and syllable splitting 4Phoneme Segmentation 5Phoneme Manipulation

5. Reading Instruction for Hearing- Impaired Children Hearing-impaired children have difficulty learning to read Often lag behind their hearing peers academically (especially in reading) Incorporating phonological awareness activities in their reading curriculum would facilitate reading growth

6. Methods Subjects: 5 hearing-impaired children enrolled at CID Procedure: pre-/post-test design used to evaluate effects of the training program Lindamood Auditory Conceptualzation Test used as a phonological awareness measure

7. Test Administration Pre-check done to verify that each subject understood the tasks Scores converted to percentage correct Four of the five subjects scored below the recommended minimum for their current reading grade level in school

8. Intervention Sounds Sensible Phonological Awareness Training Program for Reading (S.P.I.R.E.) Each subject received approximately 30 minutes of training each weeks for six weeks Training was received during the school day, in addition to their reading program

9. Results All but one subject scored below the recommended minimum score for their current reading grade level Three of the five subjects showed no change (+/- 2 points) from pre- to post-test The other two obtained improved scores

10. Results (cont.)

11. Pre- and Post-test Performance on the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test Post-test scores did not differ significantly from the pretest scores

12. Results (cont.)

13. Results (Cont.) The amount of training received is not related to improvement from pretest to post- test The training program may be helpful to some hearing-impaired children such as children C, D, and E who exhibit reading levels more than 1 year behind expectation for their age

14. Conclusions Phonological awareness training can have a positive effect on the acquisition of phonological awareness tasks More information is needed to determine how effective the training program is

15. Conclusions (cont.) Longer periods of intervention Control group: another group of hearing- impaired children who are given the same pre- ad post-test measures, but receive no phonological awareness training