Project PREPARE: Preparing preschoolers and kindergartners who are deaf to learn to read by teaching them early critical service words typically visually and linguistically inaccessible to them through a computer-based instruction product

Children with significant hearing loss continually exhibit low reading levels, due in part to the difficulty they face upon entering school of understanding basal reading vocabulary, especially critical service words. Service words cannot easily be learned through the use of pictures or objects but constitute up to 75% of all words used in basal readers, including prepositions, conjunctions, articles, adverbs, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. Deaf children, in preparation for school, have a difficult time learning these words because they cannot easily hear them or see the visually-obscure referents for these words, and because they often are not exposed to these words from persons around them who speak and sign or who use American Sign Language. Project PREPARE proposes to address this need by developing an interactive CD-ROM to help deaf preschoolers/kindergartners learn service words they will encounter in their basal readers. During Phase I, one unit was developed, field-tested, and found to be effective. During Phase II, six more units will be developed and field-tested statewide in Utah.