The Benefit of Assessment-Based Language and Reading
Instruction: Perspectives From a Case Study
Diane Corcoran Nielsen
University of Kansas
Barbara Luetke-Stahlman
We present a case study of the language and literacy development of a deaf child, Marcy, from preschool through sixth
grade. The purpose of the project was to examine the connection between language and reading and to provide insight
into the relationships between them. To compile the case
study, we analyzed data from nine years of follow-up, including listening, speech articulation, semantic, syntactic, reading, and writing information drawn from a number of informal and formal assessments. Annual evaluation of language
and literacy skills was used to select educational placements,
as well as instructional methods, strategies, and materials.
Given that Marcy began school at 4 years of age, mute and
without expressive language of any form (oral or sign), it may
at first appear remarkable that she read narrative and expository text as did her hearing peers by sixth grade, because a
substantial body of research shows that most deaf students
read at the fourth-grade level by high school graduation (review by Paul, 1998). However, those responsible for Marcy’s
education prevented reading failure by carefully planning, instituting, and monitoring elements of language and literacy
instruction. We present Marcy’s progress and instruction by
grade level and discuss it within the framework of phases/
stages of reading development. We hope that the resulting
case study may serve as an example of the language-reading
connection, an awareness important not only for the literacy
instruction of deaf and language-challenged children but for
hearing students as well.
The language and reading abilities and challenges of a
deaf child may at first appear different from those of a
hearing child. But we have learned in our work toCorrespondence should be sent to Diane Corcoran Nielsen, Department
of Teaching and Leadership, 446 J. R. Pearson Hall, 1122 West Campus
Road, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-3101 (e-mail: dnielsen@
ku.edu).
2002 Oxford University Press
gether that when students live in the inner city, have
special learning needs, or have a hearing loss, they often share the challenge of learning English—not informal, routine, daily English, but the decontexualized
language required to comprehend and express the
thinking skills required in school.
In this case study, we have tried to detail the important aspects of the life of a deaf child, Marcy, as she
moves through the stages of developing into a proficient reader, acquiring “cognitive-academic” language,
as well as reading and writing proficiency. We hope to
provide insight into several complex processes and relationships among them.
Marcy was born in Bulgaria in December 1987
and lived in an orphanage for the first 4 years of her
life. She was a deaf and mute child, communicating
through mime and physical behavior. If she were unhappy or scared, she would throw a tantrum. She did
not have a hearing aid or any other assistive listening
device. She could not hear spoken language, nor was
she provided access to it visually (sign). When Marcy
was adopted in January 1992, and came to live in the
United States, she had never cut with scissors, colored,
or been exposed to literacy activities.
Marcy moved to a suburb of a large Midwestern
city with her adoptive parents. She had three older sisters, one of whom was deaf. She was enrolled in a public school program for deaf preschoolers the day after
her arrival. Marcy attended the same school for the rest
of that year and for a second year of preschool, as well
as for kindergarten through sixth grade. As professors
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
with different areas of expertise, deaf education, and
reading, we had access to 9 years of communication and
literacy data, because one of us is Marcy’s mother.
(Paul, 1998). However, this case study involved a child
whose teachers and parents used English, signed exactly as they spoke it—and that is the language Marcy
acquired as well.
Terminology
As a deaf educator and a reading professor, we began
discussing the connection between Marcy’s “oral” and
written language acquisition. We realized that the
meaning of some of the terminology used in the field
of deaf education might differ from how the same
terms are used in the field of reading. For example, in
deaf education, the term “oral language” has to be distinguished from the terms of receptive and expressive
language. When a child is hearing, one thinks about
oral and written language as marking expressive competency, but a deaf child can be mute and demonstrate
age-appropriate semantic and syntactic language abilities. Therefore, oral language or speech is identified as
but one modality of expressing language. A deaf child
might also communicate through sign alone (without
speech) or through a combination of partially intelligible speech and sign, expressed simultaneously. Thus,
via various modalities, the same use (syntactic), meaning
(semantic), and form (pragmatic) aspects of language
evidenced by a hearing child can be demonstrated by a
deaf child. We used the term “communication” to include speech articulation, speechreading, and language
use, as well as listening ability (or audition).
In our work, we used the term “language” to refer
to either oral or manual English. Further, we discussed
basic, informal, routine language as different from decontextualized (Snow & Tabors, 1993) or cognitiveacademic language proficiency (Cummins, 1984). This
language-reading connection is supported in the literature (Apel & Swank, 1999; Newcomer & Hammil,
1975; Roth, Speece, & Cooper, 1996; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Freeman, 1984; Tunmer, 1989; Tunmer &
Hoover, 1992; Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985; Vogel, 1974;
Warren-Leubecker, 1987). Last, in more general discussions of deaf education, there are always two possible languages to consider: American Sign Language
(ASL) and English. Deaf students in the United States
might have teachers who use ASL or they might be instructed in spoken or signed English. Most often, various combinations of these two languages are used
Signing a Language
English was Marcy’s first language because her parents, who are hearing, communicated in English as
their dominant and home language. For several reasons
they chose to use a system of simultaneously spoken
and signed English, called Signing Exact English, or
SEE (Gustason, Zawolkow, & Pfetzing, 1973). One reason was that administrators in the school district in
which the family lived decided to use this instructional
input several years before the family moved to the area,
and Marcy’s parents believed that her exposure to the
same language at home and at school would benefit her
as she acquired a first language (Luetke-Stahlman,
1988, 1990). In addition, Marcy’s parents were already
using SEE with their older deaf daughter, and they
wanted to use the same sign system with Marcy.
School administrators of the deaf education program in which Marcy was enrolled and her parents
were aware of studies that reported the literacy benefit
of using SEE (see review by Luetke-Stahlman, 1993).
Those at school valued the use of SEE, attempted to
sign English grammar accurately, and were supervised
and evaluated as to their proficiency (Mayer & Lowenbraum, 1990). Teachers and interpreters were rated by
a state evaluation system, and those working with
Marcy had earned the highest SEE rating. Thus, both
professionals at school and Marcy’s family members
attempted to accurately represent the morphology and
syntax of English. SEE is the only instructional manual
input in which this is possible.
SEE was designed to represent the grammar of English in several ways (Gustason et al., 1973). First,
different signs are used to represent root words so that
the various pronouns, contractions, and verb forms are
distinguished visually as different words. (e.g., “tree,”
“woods,” “forest,” “orchard,” and “jungle”). The SEE
system also includes signs that are added to root words
or base signs so that inflections and derivations are produced. In a similar manner, other parts of language
such as nominative and adjectival forms can be distin-
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
guished. For example, the words electric, electrician, electrical, electricity are all signed using different combinations of signs in SEE, but not in other manual systems.
Given the empirically substantiated relationship
between English and reading found with hearing children (Adams, 1990; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998;
Tunmer & Hoover, 1992), it seems obvious that the
reading achievement of deaf children would be adversely affected if parents and teachers did not communicate using grammatically accurate models of English
syntax that children can comprehend (Paul & Quigley,
1994). As expected, researchers in deaf education have
found that better English grammar knowledge is correlated with higher reading achievement (see Babb, 1979;
Brasal & Quigley, 1977; Luetke-Stahlman, 1988, 1990;
Moeller & Johnson, 1988; Moores & Sweet, 1990). For
example, Luetke-Stahlman (1988, 1990) reported that
first- and second-grade deaf students who were exposed to SEE read significantly better than deaf subjects who used speech-only, ASL, or other invented
English sign systems in which the grammar of English
was only partially provided. There is no research that
documents age-appropriate reading achievement of
deaf students who are instructed only in ASL (see review by Paul, 1998).
Data Collection
When Marcy first entered preschool, the teacher of the
deaf and the speech-language pathologist conducted an
informal assessment of her language skills and an educational team drafted an Individualized Educational
Plan (IEP). The federal Individual with Disabilities
Education Act requires that such evaluation and planning be conducted at least annually.
In the following years, data were collected from a
number of informal and formal sources and used to
guide discussion at Marcy’s annual IEP meetings.
Then goals and objectives were written, from which
lesson plans were drafted. Formal testing was conducted by both local school personnel and researchers
associated with a cochlear implant project at Indiana
University, Otologic Research Laboratory.
Because Marcy was deaf, many more listening,
speech, language, and literacy measures were administered to her throughout the elementary years than
151
typically are administered to hearing children or to
children with special needs. (See Appendix 1 for descriptions of these tests.) Her parents, case manager,
and the special education director kept copies of Marcy’s IEPs, including annual language and literacy assessment summaries. The speech language pathologist
at her school kept actual test protocols. Informal assessments were kept by her mother and included copies
of notes from observations, checklists, tests taken in
various school subjects, writing samples, videotaped
language and literacy samples, videotaped lessons, and
other such information.
In addition to informal assessment, Marcy’s educational team deliberately chose to use tests that had been
standardized on hearing children to assess her language
and literacy progress. This was in part because they
could not locate standardized tools recently normed on
deaf students; most were standardized 25–30 years ago.
The students sampled primarily used ASL, PSE
(which constitutes conceptual ASL signs sequenced in
English word order and is also called contact-signing),
neither of which were the instructional language to
which Marcy was exposed. The deaf children in the
samples had attended residential or large day programs, segregated from hearing peers, and this was not
representative of Marcy’s school programming. Instead, her situation resembled that of 80% of deaf students today (Moores, 1999): Marcy attended public
school and was one of only a few students who were
deaf or hard of hearing in her classroom or grade. Her
work was compared daily to that of hearing students.
Currently, most deaf students in the United States are
taught by general education teachers, with or without
the services of an interpreter or consultation by a
teacher of the deaf. For these reasons, educational
teams routinely administer standardized tests used by
the school district to assess all students with special
needs.
Results
To analyze and discuss the connections between Marcy’s language and literacy development, we first organized informal and formal information in a chronology
of files by date. For standardized test score data, we independently located scores by year, compared our fig-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
ures, and rechecked the original test protocols if there
were discrepancies. We then converted each score to a
percentile (coded as percentile) using the test administration information. Thirty percent of these figures
were converted independently from raw scores to percentiles by a professor in special education. There were
no discrepancies between his conversions and ours. We
used percentile data because we thought most readers
were familiar with them (Bender, 1999) and because
the various tests in the study employed different types
of scoring systems. Two measures, listening and speech
articulation, were converted to percentages because
percentile scores were not available.
After converting the scores, we organized them
into tables. The speech and listening development data
are presented by year in Table 1. Receptive and expressive language data for Marcy’s kindergarten year are
provided in Table 2; Table 3 presents first-grade linguistic and reading data, second-grade linguistic and
reading data in Table 4 and so forth through sixthgrade data in Table 8. Data from the district
curriculum-based reading assessments, collected over
the years, is presented in Table 9.
Data in Tables 2 through 8 were divided into five
columns each, based on a categorization scheme that
reflects typical interpretation of a normal distribution
curve. A 2nd–15th percentile score falls within two
standard deviations below the mean and was considered below average. A 16th–49th percentile score fell
within one standard derivation below the mean and was
referred to as low average. A score at the 50th percentile was average. A 51st–84th percentile score fell
within one standard derivation above the mean and was
considered high average. An 85th–98th percentile
score fell within two standard deviations above the
mean and was considered above average.
In this article, we referred to these categories rather
than test scores, unless we thought that specific scores
helped to illustrate a particular point. Exact test scores
are located on the tables for the interested reader, with
the exception that the linguistic data collected in the
preschool years is presented within the text of the article. This is because there were only two tests given in
those years.
When the tables were complete, we began to integrate our review of the literature, annual descriptions
of Marcy’s school experience, and the informal (videotapes, school papers, etc.) and formal information collected each year. To make the case study readable, we
chose to include information that exemplified the predominant language and literacy connections, which we
supported with results from our review of the literature. We typically presented this information in a sequence that included a description of relevant activities
at home and then the characteristics of the school program. We ordered academic data by first discussing listening and speech-articulation progress and then language and literacy information. Receptive semantic
language data were usually presented before receptive
syntactic data; expressive semantic data before expressive syntactic data. The literacy data were sequenced
to include reading, spelling, and writing information.
The Preschool Years: Access to Language and
Literacy
Initial audiometric testing indicated that Marcy had a
profound bilateral, sensorineural, unaided hearing loss.
That is, she could not hear an airplane flying overhead,
let alone human speech. She was fitted with hearing
aids soon after her arrival in the United States and
wore them daily for 3 months. Aided audiometric data
collected during this time illustrated that the hearing
aids only minimally improved her ability to detect
sound (i.e., 250 Hz at 60 dB and 500 Hz at 75 dB). In
short, Marcy could not hear any sounds in the English
speech spectrum even while wearing hearing aids.
Marcy was immersed as an observer and participant of simultaneously voiced and signed conversations
upon her adoption. Teaching some vocabulary was
simply a matter of providing Marcy with sign labels for
concepts she already knew (e.g., she learned the basic
signs for colors in one afternoon), but most aspects of
language were much slower to develop and resulted at
times in stimulus-response interactions. For example, a
videotaped language sample taken shortly after her arrival shows Marcy eating breakfast beside her older
deaf sister. The sister competently models responses to
routine breakfast queries from their mother. However,
when it is Marcy’s turn to request a bowl, then cereal,
and finally milk, she imitates the sign WANT as if she
does not yet understand the linguistic significance of
Initially mute.
Speech
development
Articulated single,
highly visible
phonemes; in
isolation, in a series.
Learn to detect
when sound was
present or not.
Preschool 2
1993
5:1
Expressive English
Receptive English
ASSETT ⫽ bn
PPVT ⫽ 5 percentile
CELF
Concepts & directions ⫽
9th percentile
Sentence structure ⫽
16th percentile
LPT
Multiple Meanings – bn
Attributes ⫽ bn
LPT total ⫽ 11th percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
Kindergarten (6:1 years of age)
4:0 – 4:3 Tried
hearing aid,
could not hear
speech. 4:6
Received
cochlear
implant.
Listening
development
Table 2
Preschool 1
1992
4:1
Speech and listening development
Grade
Year
Age in January
Table 1
Expressive One Word
Vocabulary Test ⫽
48th percentile
Low average
16–49th percentile
Could discriminate:
bababa/tatata; loud/soft
sounds; long/short
sounds; one phoneme
from another with 76%
accuracy; comprehended
simple requests in
context; 75% correct on
minimal pairs test.
Articulated phonemes in
initial positions; 10% on
the Goldman-Fristoe
Articulation Test; could
not produce /g/, /k/,
/gn/, /r/.
K
1994
6:1
Average
50th percentile
96% on the Ling
Speech Evaluation;
51% on GoldmanFristoe Articulation
Test; speech was
intelligible 50% in
informal conversation.
Highly similar two-and
three-syllable
phonemes sounded
alike.
1
1995
7:1
Began weekly
cello lesson
in 3rd grade.
3–4
1997 and 1998
9:1 and 10:1
Above average
85–98th percentile
In 5th grade, speech
was comprehensible
75% of the time for
both narrative and
expository topics.
Joined the school
orchestra in 5th
grade and
continued in 6th
grade.
5–6
1999 and 2000
11:1 and 12:1
LPT
Similarities ⫽ 58th percentile
Differences ⫽ 68th percentile
Associations ⫽ 74th percentile
Categories ⫽ 76th percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
71% on the GoldmanFristoe Articulation
Test; trouble articulating
second syllable of twosyllable words.
Could not differentiate
words that differed in
place like fab and fall.
Listening ability affected
spelling of within word
patterns.
2
1996
8:1
Reading
Vocabulary:
Gates-MacGinitie
Comprehension:
Gates-MacGinitie
Woodcock-Johnson
Expressive English
TOLDGrammatical
Understanding ⫽ 25th
percentile
Expressive One Word
Vocabulary Test ⫽ 19th
percentile
LPTSimilarities ⫽ 20th percentile
Categories ⫽ 23rd percentile
TOLDWord Articulation ⫽ 37th
percentile
LPT total ⫽ 41st percentile
LPT Associations ⫽ 43rd
percentile
PPVT ⫽ 2nd percentile
TOLDPicture Vocabulary ⫽ 9th
percentile
TOLDSentence Imitation ⫽ bn;
Defining Vocabulary ⫽ 5th
percentile;
Grammatical Completion ⫽
9th percentile
LPTMultiple Meanings ⫽ 15th
percentile
40th percentile
43rd percentile
Low average
16–49th percentile
34th percentile
33rd percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
Second grade (8:1 years of age)
Receptive English
Table 4
Reading
Vocabulary:
Gates-MacGinitie
Comprehension:
Gates-MacGinitie
Expressive English
Low average
16–49th percentile
ASSETT Total ⫽ 4th percentile PPVT ⫽ 18th percentile
CELF-Oral Directions ⫽ 5th
percentile
CELF-Sentence Structure ⫽
9th percentile
ASSETT Total ⫽ 9th percentile Expressive One Word
Vocabulary Test ⫽ 34th
percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
First grade (7:1 years of age)
Receptive English
Table 3
CELFSentence Structure ⫽ 50th
percentile
Average
50th percentile
Average
50th percentile
LPTDifferences ⫽ 51st percentile
Attributes ⫽ 62nd percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
88th percentile
Above average
85–98th percentile
Above average
85–98th percentile
Reading
Vocabulary:
Gates-MacGinitie
WoodcockRead. Mastery
Comprehension:
WoodcockRead. Mastery
Gates-MacGinitie
13th percentile
CELFFormulating Sentences ⫽
4th percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
Fourth grade (10:1 years of age)
Receptive English
OWLS
Expressive English
Table 6
20th percentile
62nd percentile
21st percentile
16th percentile
LPTSimilarities ⫽ 26th percentile
Associations ⫽ 39th percentile
Multiple Meanings ⫽ 40th
percentile
Attributes ⫽ 42nd percentile
Total LPT ⫽ 44th percentile
Categories ⫽ 49th percentile
PPVT ⫽ 20th percentile
Low average
16–49th percentile
47th percentile
39th percentile
21st percentile
27th percentile
Average
50th percentile
Above average
85–98th percentile
High average
Above average
51–84th percentile 85–98th percentile
LPTDifferences ⫽ 66th percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
CELFWord Classes ⫽ 37th percentile
Word Structure ⫽ 37th
percentile
Expressive English
Reading
Vocabulary
Gates-MacGinitie
ITBS
Comprehension
Gates-MacGinitie
ITBS
CELFSentence Structure ⫽ 50th
percentile
PPVT ⫽ 20th percentile
Receptive English
CELFRecalling Sentences ⫽ 1st percentile
Formulating Sentences ⫽ 2nd
percentile
Average
50th percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
Third grade (9:1 years of age)
Low average
16–49th percentile
Table 5
Reading
Vocabulary
ITBS
WoodcockRead. Mastery
Comprehension
WoodcockRead. Mastery
ITBS
Below average
2–15th percentile
Sixth grade (12:1 years of age)
Receptive English
OWLS
Expressive English
Table 8
Reading
Vocabulary
Gates-MacGinitie
Woodcock Read. Mastery
Comprehension
Woodcock Read. Mastery
Gates-MacGinitie
LPTSimilarities ⫽ 7th
percentile
Differences ⫽ 13th
percentile
Below average
2–15th percentile
Fifth grade (11:1 years of age)
Receptive English
Expressive English
Table 7
24th percentile
50th percentile
Average
50th percentile
CELFWord Classes ⫽ 50th
percentile
Average
50th percentile
16th percentile
LPTAssociations ⫽ 39th percentile
Similarities ⫽ 26th percentile
Multiple Meanings ⫽ 40th percentile
Attributes ⫽ 42nd percentile
Total LPT ⫽ 44th percentile
Categorizations ⫽ 49th percentile
Low average
16–49th percentile
35th percentile
25th percentile
PPVT ⫽ 25th percentile
CELFFormulating Sentences ⫽
16th percentile
LPTCategories ⫽ 23rd
percentile
Multiple Meanings ⫽
23rd percentile
Associations ⫽ 32nd
percentile
Low average
16–49th percentile
65th percentile
59th percentile
LPTDifferences ⫽ 66th percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
57th percentile
63rd percentile
LPT total score ⫽ 56th
percentile
High average
51–84th percentile
Above average
85–98th percentile
LPTAttributes ⫽ 89th
percentile
Above average
85–98th percentile
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
157
Table 9 District curriculum-based assessment (CBA)
Grade
Year
Age
Narrative
Midyear
End-year
Expository
Midyear
End-year
1
1995
7:1 years
2
1996
8:1 years
3
1997
9:1 years
4
1998
10:1 years
5
1999
11:1 years
6
2000
12:1 years
80% (SP)
50% (SP)
60% (SP)
80% (SP)
na
na
SP
Specific scores: na
100% (SP)
80% (SP)
37% (FDN)
20% (FDN)
80% (SP)
33% (FDN)
na
na
SP
Specific scores: na
79% (PR)
87% (SP)
FDN ⫽ further development needed; SP ⫽ strong performer; PR ⫽ progressing reader; na ⫽ not available.
making a more specific sign-gesture. Reminiscent of
episodes with Helen Keller before the scene at the water pump, Marcy dutifully imitates the sign, her arms
and hands awkwardly moving as a unit rather than as
the articulators of words.
Copeland, Winsor, and Osborn (1994) explained
that typically, “children’s prior knowledge as speakers
of English can be brought to bear as they master its
alphabetic system” (p. 28). That is, as they learn to
speak, children internalize how sounds can be systematically combined to form words. In addition, they
learn about semantics and syntax, or how words can be
appropriately used linguistically in phrases and sentences. This knowledge is normally acquired in the
preschool years (Copeland et al., 1994).
In contrast, the majority of deaf children begin to
learn to read without linguistic competence (Paul,
1998). That is, they often cannot articulate speech in
an intelligible manner, nor can they comprehend and
express English. Marcy could not either. In fact, she
began school as a profoundly deaf-mute who was alingual. Thus, her situation was not a question of transitioning from Bulgarian to English, but instead of acquiring a first language through “accessible” social
interaction.
Slowly but surely, however, Marcy began to learn
basic vocabulary and grammar just as a hearing toddler
begins to develop spoken language—reinforced by the
social context and the power of learning to use language to get what she wanted. Adults employed standard language facilitation strategies that included paraphrasing, maintenance of the topic, expansions,
building on routines, and so forth, to facilitate Marcy’s
language development (Luetke-Stahlman, 1998). In ad-
dition to receiving daily instruction from a teacher of the
deaf, who was trained to intentionally facilitate language and literacy abilities, Marcy received 30 minutes
of therapy daily from a speech-language pathologist
who was experienced in working with deaf children.
In February 1992, having been exposed to English
for a month, Marcy’s limited language understanding
was evident when she described a picture as “red language.” Her formal signs were frequently interspersed
with mime, facial expressions, and gestures, as this is
how she communicated before she was adopted. At 4.7
years of age, four months later, Marcy was given the
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) to try to document her receptive vocabulary knowledge. She scored
in the low average range (35th percentile), a score we
feel does not accurately portray her struggle to acquire
language. Research is available to support our concern.
White and Tischer (1999) described possible
threats to the construct validity of receptive vocabulary
tests such as the PPVT when used to evaluate deaf
children. This is “because of the prevalence of iconicity of the signs used to encode the vocabulary” (p. 338).
For example, to ask a child, “Where is the picture of ‘a
thumb’?,” the tester points to his or her own thumb
when signing the word “THUMB.” We believe that
this factor, as well as the high percentage of nouns included on the first part of the test, enabled Marcy to
receive a score that was an inflation of her overall vocabulary ability.
Marcy had cochlear implant surgery in May l992,
near the end of her first five months of preschool.
Twenty-two electrodes were surgically threaded into
the cochlea of her right inner ear, which sent an artificial sound signal through the electrodes and eighth
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
nerve to her brain when simulated by a processor worn
externally. Marcy wore her cochlear implant equipment daily, and over the course of that first summer,
she began to make connections between hearing,
speech, and SEE signs. The implant did not allow her
to hear normally, however. She had to “learn to listen,”
or, in other words, her brain had to learn to process
the sounds stimulating it. In addition, Marcy had to
integrate speech sounds with the language she was acquiring.
To help develop her simultaneously spoken and
signed language ability, Marcy was introduced to many
new experiences. Upon her arrival in the United States,
Marcy had never experienced a family, a birthday, or
a book, or the hundreds of other objects, events, and
processes about which stories and informational texts
are written. Thus, from the onset, communication and
literacy were integrated in her life. She was read to by
proficient readers who could sign SEE, she was introduced to books at home, and she frequented the public
and school libraries. She also went with her family on
many local trips (e.g., zoo, farm, fire station) and family
vacations, planned so she could experience such concepts as “a mountain” and “an ocean.”
Marcy’s college-educated parents and three older
sisters enjoyed reading, discussing ideas, arguing their
point of view, writing for formal and informal reasons,
and playing a variety of board games that required language use or reading abilities. Their home was rich
with opportunities to value and enjoy literacy. Numerous reading and writing materials were accessible to
Marcy, as were two computers. Her grandmother
printed frequent letters to her. Videotaped samples
document that books were routinely placed in a clear
recipe holder on the kitchen table near Marcy. These
were usually children’s concept books, with pictures
and labels grouped by category. Family members
would label and discuss these in SEE when there was a
lull in the mealtime conversation. The family also routinely corresponded through written messages, such as
notes of who was where and a list of needed foods on
the refrigerator. Videotapes of signed stories that
Marcy enjoyed were each labeled with stickers and
printed titles. Two dresser drawers in her room were
labeled: “school clothes” and “play clothes” so that she
could dress more independently.
Marcy also was surrounded by some literacy stimulation not common in hearing homes. This was because
her deaf sister often used the TDD, a special telephone
for the deaf, on which conversation that would be typically heard appeared as printed text across a small
screen on the device. Marcy often watched as her sister
typed and read on the TDD. In addition, the family
used the captioner on their television frequently, which
made text visible at the bottom of the screen when anyone spoke during a program. The literacy activities in
which Marcy was immersed were reflective of wholelanguage approaches that Stahl (1994) found produced
significantly higher literacy achievement at the kindergarten level than did basal reading program approaches. Marcy’s engagement in such activities also
supported Chall’s (1983) notion of stage theory, which
says that decoding words is preceded by an awareness
of the functions of print and later to an awareness of
its form.
The Preschool Years Continued: An Orientation to
Print and How it Functions
Like hearing, preschool-age children of this age, Marcy’s attention was focused on “the meaning of the collective, ordered stream of words used in conversation,”
as she watched and responded to requests and comments (Copeland et al., 1994, p. 29). However, the
teacher of the deaf also had to plan daily lessons to engage Marcy in activities in which the “stream of words”
was reduced to manageable concepts for her to notice
and, therefore, acquire. For example, Marcy learned
the meaning of prepositions by following directions to
put objects in, on, above, or under other objects.
Marcy worked daily with a speech-language pathologist and was able to reliably detect the presence of
sound after having worn her cochlear implant for 3 or
4 months. She worked to articulate single phonemes
that were highly visible on the mouth, such as /b/. Initially Marcy practiced phonemes in isolation, then in a
series (e.g., /b/, /b/, /b/), and later in words (e.g.,
baa, bee, boo). A videotaped sample filmed at home
about this time illustrates how family members helped
Marcy acquire these rudiments of communication. In
one scene, her older sister is teaching her to say, “boo”
(one of her speech targets) as another sister pretends to
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
be surprised. They repeat the game over and over, much
to Marcy’s delight—and benefit, as she practices speech
sounds in a meaningful context. Although family
members and the speech-language pathologist’s purpose was to improve Marcy’s speech by helping her realize that sounds are combined to form words, these
activities also caused her to manipulate phonemes,
which boosted her development of phonemic awareness.
The teacher of the deaf facilitated emergent reading skills as well, even though Marcy did not have the
awareness of phonology that would be expected of a
hearing child her age. She exposed Marcy to elements
common in shared reading experiences by demonstrating concepts of print, engaging in life-to-text and textto-life (Cochran-Smith, 1984) connections, and so
forth.
Sulzby (1985) and others suggest that interactive
reading sessions between adult and child facilitate
emergent reading development. Through such experiences, children begin to acquire the language of print,
mimicking phrases and words from books, and are exposed to word order common in written text but not in
conversation. Rare words that are atypical of the informal language used in their everyday lives can also be
acquired (Beals, DeTemple, & Dickinson, 1994).
Although Marcy’s world was rich with language
and literacy stimulation, a conversation taken from a
family videotape around her fifth birthday documents
Marcy’s limitations in expressing herself. As cake is
eaten, Marcy is seen signing “GIRL GOOD” with facial expression, as she attempts to converse with another deaf child. Later, when gifts are opened, Marcy
signs, “HAVE,” and a few seconds later, “ONE,” as if
to communicate, “I have one of these now.” She again
uses facial gestures and adds a tilting of her shoulders,
but it is unclear what she is trying to communicate with
these actions. Marcy produces voiced sounds when she
signs each of these utterances, but her words are unintelligible. Due to Marcy’s limited communicative ability in this second preschool year, little formal evaluation was conducted. When the PPVT receptive
vocabulary test was given again midyear, Marcy scored
below average (10th percentile), a score that seemed
more valid to her educational team members than her
supposed “average” performance the previous year.
159
Kindergarten: A Focus on Basic, Routine
Communication
By kindergarten Marcy had adjusted to home life and
was participating in literacy experiences. Marcy also
saw her sisters, who were as much as 9 years older than
she, engaged in a barrage of literacy activities. She was
beginning to communicate more with her deaf 7-yearold sister, who had been assessed as signing English as
a typical 7-year-old hearing child would speak it (see
Table 2).
A shoebox of books was now kept in each family
car to entertain Marcy on errands, since she could not
hear the radio or talk extensively to the driver. Her father built a shelf by her bed, so her reading materials
were readily available before bedtime, and a basket was
placed in the bathroom to hold additional books and
magazines. That Marcy routinely engaged in an independent “reading” time before going to sleep at night
enhanced her preparation for becoming a reader herself (Leslie & Allen, 1999; Mason, 1992; Snow et al.,
1998). Marcy enjoyed this quiet time and was aware
that other family members were in their beds reading
as well.
The literacy activities in Marcy’s home placed a
value on reading, which has been documented to be
important in furthering reading achievement. Leslie
and Allen (1999) reviewed 30 years of research emphasizing the important role of family members in the literacy development of children. For example, in their
study, interest in books and the valuing of literacy were
related to children’s reading ability. Mason (1992) initially reported that family socioeconomic status (SES)
and the availability of print in the home correlated
most with reading achievement, but later identified academic guidance, attitude toward education, parent aspirations, and conversations in the home as contributing more directly to early reading achievement and
accounted for more variance in reading scores than
SES. Marcy’s situation reflected the findings of both of
these research projects.
Although she attended her neighborhood public
school, Marcy was not enrolled in kindergarten with
hearing children. She did, however, participate in all
the nonacademic activities with her hearing peers, such
as lunch and recess. Marcy was taught primarily by a
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
teacher of the deaf, who worked with her in a resource
room. She also continued to see the speech-language
pathologist for a half hour daily. As it had been in preschool, the focus of her day was on the development of
basic, routine communication. Her teacher of the deaf
read many stories with her and the two of them discussed these at length. If Marcy did not understand the
language used in the text, context was added. That is,
real objects and pictures were provided and matched to
the unfamiliar printed word, examples were given, and
links were made to past experiences. For example, her
teacher demonstrated and described the word “wobbly” with a real pair of high heels. Language lessons
evolved around story characters and plots, and stories
were sometimes chosen because the vocabulary they
contained reinforced a language concept being facilitated. Marcy had excellent school attendance in kindergarten and throughout her elementary years.
In kindergarten, Marcy improved her basic communication ability. She was no longer mute. She demonstrated in this year her ability to produce most phonemes in the initial position in isolated words; however,
when asked to articulate initial, final, and medial phonemes of words included on the Goldman-Fristoe Articulation Test, she could produce only 10%, and all in
the initial position. Even with modeling and prompting
by a skilled professional, Marcy could not produce the
phonemes /g/, /k/, /gn/, and /r/. A listener who was
not familiar with deaf speakers could understand about
half of what she was trying to say during informal conversation.
Marcy’s ability to listen to speech and understand
it as a form of communication also had improved in the
year and a half she had worn her cochlear implant. As
is typical when deaf children are being trained to listen,
Marcy first learned to detect if sound was present or
not, and then began to work on discriminating spoken
sounds. In kindergarten, she progressed to being able
to tell whether pairs of phonemes were similar or dissimilar. This was practiced in a quiet room with the
speech-language pathologist, who blocked her mouth
area from view so that Marcy could not speechread.
Marcy was asked to listen to utterances such as “ba ba
ba” versus “ba ba ba,” or “ba ba ba” versus “ta ta ta”
and to tell whether the series of sounds were the same
or different. She also was able to discriminate a loud
series from a soft one, a long series from a short one,
and one phoneme from another (with 76% accuracy).
Marcy could comprehend simple requests and comments auditorially only (without accompanying sign) in
routine, context-embedded situations. For example, if
she was told, “Get your pencil,” without signs, in a situation where she would expect a pencil to be needed,
she understood what to do.
Marcy also practiced listening to a closed set of vocabulary words taken from shared reading text. Her
task was to identify which word in a group was being
spoken. This was done first while only listening and
then, if necessary, while listening and speechreading simultaneously. Each word was used in a sentence after
it was correctly identified. The careful articulation of
the sounds in words taken from her shared reading
work was practiced throughout the day. Finally, Marcy
often was asked to imitate the adult model of phrases
that appeared in the stories read to her. Both the
teacher of the deaf and the speech pathologist integrated sound/letter activities into lessons to facilitate
Marcy’s knowledge of how specific sounds are linked
to print.
That Marcy could hear at least something of human speech, as compared to functioning as a profoundly deaf student, was important to her literacy development. Several researchers have discovered that
deaf children who can hear at least some sound become
better readers (Conrad, 1979; Fabbretti, Volterra, &
Pontecorvo, 1998; Geers & Moog, 1989; Paul, 1998).
Although Marcy’s family and the professionals
who worked on her educational team immersed her in
accessible language, it was not a surprise that Marcy
scored below average on receptive and expressive standardized language tests she was given in preparation
for her IEP in the middle of her kindergarten year.
Given but 2 years of exposure to accessible language,
she functioned linguistically like a hearing 2-year-old.
Her score on the PPVT receptive vocabulary word test
was well below average (5th percentile).
With regard to acquiring decontextualized language, Marcy’s development also was delayed. Compared to hearing peers, her score was also below average on the Assessing Semantic Skills Through
Everyday Themes (ASSET), also a measure of receptive semantic ability but one that requires the ability
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
to comprehend more complex English than the PPVT
vocabulary measure. Sample items include “Show me
the crayons” and “Show me some things you can
string” to which the student responds while looking at
several pictures (e.g., classroom, kitchen, garage).
Marcy’s educational team was aware that the comprehension and expression of decontextualized or
“cognitive-academic” language skill (Cummins, 1984)
had been found to predict fourth-grade reading comprehension (Tabors, 1996). Therefore, they were encouraged when Marcy scored above the mean in January of her kindergarten year on subtests that measured
skills targeted in her IEP and that had been facilitated
during the year. Four expressive semantic tests from
the Language Processing Test (LPT) targeted such
skills in their assessment: Associations (74th percentile), Categorizations (76th percentile), Differences
(68th percentile), Similarities (58th percentile). These
measures required Marcy to give associations for words
such as “shoe,” “pencil,” and “horse”; give categories
(e.g., fruits, farm animals); provide examples; and tell
how words like “car” and “bus” or “sink” and “bathtub” are the same or different.
Marcy scored far below her hearing peers on decontextualized expressive semantic language skills that
had not been priorities in her program. On the
ASSETT test, she could not answer questions such as,
“What are 1 . . . 3 . . . 7 . . . called ?” or “How does
the slide feel?” Marcy could not explain the multiple
meanings for words such as “trip” after listening to
sentences such as “The class is taking a field trip,” and
“Don’t trip on the rug,” nor could Marcy give attributes of words like “pencil” and “desk” categorized
along the dimensions of function, components, color,
size, shape, category, location, and so on. These were
all skills measured by the LPT, a standard tool that
measured expressive skills needed in the general classroom. But knowing this information and the importance of these skills in relation to proficient literacy development (Snow et al., 1998), Marcy’s education team
members set new objectives to help her develop these
skills in the coming year.
Marcy did not understand either routine or complex English grammar. She could not point to the correct picture when asked to find “The boy is sleepy,”
“Where does the boy play baseball?” or “The boy saw
161
a girl who was carrying a hammer,” as required on
the Clinical Evaluation of Linguistic Fundamentals
(CELF)-Sentence Structure subtest (16th percentile).
Neither could she follow simple commands in formal
evaluation sessions where routine and context were absent. This was measured by the CELF-Concepts and
Directions subtest (9th percentile). Marcy’s language
was expressed in short, ungrammatical utterances, and
an enormous amount of prior knowledge was required
by adults to discern her meaning. Videotaped language
samples confirm that although Marcy communicated
with great joy and enthusiasm, the listener was most often completely stumped by what she was trying to say.
Marcy’s reading-related abilities were not formally
evaluated during her kindergarten year. Although she
had not worked specifically on sound-to-letter matching or a sight-word vocabulary as might be common for
kindergartners (Snow et. al., 1998), Marcy was
an emergent reader, according to the information of
stages/phases of reading synthesized by Gunning
(1996) from the work of several researchers, including
Chall (1983). In this stage, birth to 5 years old, children
“draw conclusions based on perception and experience” (p. 13). Like other emergent readers, Marcy
could read environmental print and scribble, and she
loved for adults to read to her. Fountas and Pinnell
(1996) described this stage as one in which emergent
readers gained information about text from pictures
and could attend to some features of print.
In kindergarten, Marcy demonstrated her acquisition of some phonemic relationships through the
speech and language work that was the focus of her
school day. Just a few months later as she began first
grade, Marcy demonstrated that “speech and language” activities affected her understanding of phonics
and sight words. That is, she used several sound-toprint connections when given Clay’s (1993) written
dictation task, an assessment that required her to print
the phonemic sounds that represented words pronounced by an adult.
Obviously, there were many language skills that
Marcy’s educational team could have chosen to facilitate. They prioritized language and literacy targets by
using developmental guidelines, such as the Developmental Language Curriculum (reprinted in LuetkeStahlman, 1998), Gunning’s (1996) synthesis of read-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
ing stages, and a district list of research-based literacy
accomplishments similar to those of Snow et al. (1998).
When adults helped Marcy acquire skills correlated
with reading proficiency and mediated conversation
around text, they used a method of developing vocabulary and grammar that was an alternative to isolated
drill-and-practice tasks. We believe this practice was of
paramount importance in allowing Marcy to progress
with language and literacy development as she did
throughout the elementary years.
First Grade: Average Narrative Reading
Comprehension Achieved
Throughout her first grade year, Marcy again was
taught in the resource room by a teacher of the deaf.
She and two other deaf children her age worked there
on academic curriculum and were integrated with
hearing children for lunch, recess, and “specials.” She
did not receive formal social studies, science, or spelling instruction. Few hearing children are afforded the
3:1 teacher-pupil ratio for language arts that Marcy
had, but instruction in a resource room and an individualized program are common when students are deaf
or identified as language-impaired.
Marcy entered first grade ready to learn to read.
According to the reading stages compiled by Gunning
(1996), she was a beginning reader (see Table 3). Her
reading program from first to fifth grade consisted of
three specific reading activities: adult-student shared
reading, adult-student guided reading using leveled
text, and independent student reading (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). The activities within each of these components were guided by stage theory (Ehri, 1992;
Fountas & Pinnell, 1996) and grounded in effective
teaching methodology with a strategy focus (Pressley,
Wharton-McDonald, Misretta-Hampston, & Echevarria, 1998). Assessment and focused intervention are integral to the effective teaching process, as a teacher
must know what skills a student has acquired and
which can be aided to emerge subsequently. Students
are assisted to progress from dependence to independence with any behavior (Vygosky, 1978). One of the
most important jobs of effective instructors is helping
students to “develop independence and self-evaluation
skills” (Tierney & Pearson, 1994, p. 515). Marcy was
fortunate that her teachers were cognizant of effective
teaching strategies, including empowering strategy instruction.
Shared reading was a high priority to the teacher
of the deaf, who conducted almost daily sessions with
Marcy and her two deaf peers. She was cognizant that
researchers such as Wells (1985) found that when
young children interacted with an adult around narrative and expository text, their language and literacy
knowledge improved. Mason (1992) noted that during
shared reading, adults can provide an umbrella of explanations, interpretations, and clarifications during
“teachable moments,” because they know the background experiences of their students, as well as what
the children know. With this information, teachers
can make life-to-text and text-to-life connections
(Cochran-Smith, 1984) with students, bridging from
what they know to new concepts, vocabulary, and
grammatical structures. These elements were characteristic of the shared-reading experiences Marcy enjoyed.
Guided-reading sessions occurred individually
four or five times a week. Team members decided that
just like a hearing “at-risk” first grader, Marcy would
benefit from the instruction of a specially trained
reading-intervention teacher. Thus, a deaf educator,
trained in the procedures of a reading-intervention
program entitled Kansas Accelerated Literacy Learning (KALL) (Nielsen & Glasnapp, 1999), met for 30
minutes a day with Marcy, four to five days a week.
KALL procedures are similar to Reading Recovery
(Clay, 1993) and guided reading methodology in that
lessons consist of three parts: re-reading an independent-level story, word work, and instructional-level
reading with teacher support using a variety of wordrecognition strategies. Both narrative and expository
books were read, and focused instruction and the development of independence were key elements of the
program.
Guided-reading instruction is an instructional
framework recommended for beginning readers who
are hearing, deaf, monolingual, or bilingual (Lally,
1998; Luetke-Stahlman, 1999). Although daily guidedreading activities vary greatly depending on the needs
of the students (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996), each 30minute session involves teacher-student interactions
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
that include activities found empirically to correlate
with reading achievement. The goal of these lessons is
to develop beginning word recognition and comprehension strategies applied to gradually more difficult
text. Scaffolded instruction and analytical conversations around text are believed to be the key to this approach’s success (Pinnell, 1994).
As noted, word-recognition strategies were emphasized as a part of the KALL guided-reading procedure,
as was depth of vocabulary knowledge (e.g., defining
words, providing antonyms and synonyms, making associations, etc). The word-study aspect of the lesson
emphasized using writing to promote sound/symbol
learning and the development of the concept of word.
Phonic skills also were practiced with the speechlanguage pathologist as explained below. In these ways,
Marcy received phonics instruction “first and fast”
(Juel & Minden-Cupp, 1999). She experienced the activities that Fountas and Pinnell (1996) described as essential to help beginning readers move to the next stage
of reading where word recognition is more automatic.
Marcy was greatly motivated and empowered by
her progress as a reader in the KALL sessions. While
early videotaped sessions capture a posture of learned
helplessness, stemming from her expectation that she
should be told any word she could not read, sessions
videotaped only a few weeks later show Marcy trying to
figure out unknown words before asking for assistance.
Marcy was helped only as needed to recognize words
using phoneme to grapheme correspondences, picture
and text-based semantic clues, and remembering if she
had seen the word previously in the current or another text.
Ehri’s (1991, 1992) phases of sight-word learning
provided a framework for planning the word-study aspect of Marcy’s KALL lessons. Thus, the initial emphasis was on segmenting and blending (fully analyzing words) and later on the orthographic aspects of
words as aids to word recognition. Marcy was provided
with multimodal representations of phoneme combinations such as the articulation of the sounds in a word,
identifying the written word as compared to another
through listening, and the speechreading of words.
After 18 weeks of KALL guided-reading lessons,
Marcy tested at a Reading Recovery level of 20 (Peterson, 1991), a level roughly equivalent to an end-of-
163
first-grade-year reader. Thereafter, Marcy’s teacher of
the deaf began to provide the guided-reading lessons
rather than the KALL reading specialist.
Marcy saw a speech-language pathologist almost
daily, and her ability to hear and speak continued to
improve in first grade. The sounds Marcy was correctly able to produce gave adults insight into how well
her brain was learning to process the sounds she heard
artificially through her cochlear implant. For example,
field notes kept by the speech-language pathologist indicated that highly similar two- and three-syllable
words or phrases, such as “butterfly” and “Sunday
sky” sounded like homonyms to Marcy, as she could
not identify one from the other. In the process of helping Marcy focus on sounds in speaking and listening,
the speech-language pathologist provided readingrelated help. Marcy often worked with prepared letters
and words, or watched as the speech-language pathologist demonstrated letter-sound matches. Phonemes
practiced during speech work were always attempted in
isolation at the beginning, end, and middle of words,
and then in sentences during each session. The work
Marcy did with the speech-language pathologist was
almost akin to phonemic awareness and phonics instruction during this year, although Marcy did not usually write letters or letter combinations while engaged
in speech, audition, and expressive language tasks.
Phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is the
broad term that refers to a child’s ability to manipulate
sounds orally at the word level (e.g., identifying or producing rhyming words), syllable level (e.g., “Clap for
the number of syllables you hear in the word ba-by”),
and the sound or phoneme level. The sound level also
is commonly referred to as “phonemic awareness.” The
child demonstrates an ability to isolate sounds (e.g.,
“What sound do the words baby, ball, and bounce start
with?”) and to segment and blend phonemes. There is
a multitude of evidence justifying blending and segmenting activities to aid initial reading acquisition
for both hearing (Adams, 1990) and deaf children
(Transler, Leybaert, & Gombert, 1999).
Griffith (1991) explained the importance of phonemic awareness in facilitating a child’s ability to internalize orthographic patterns. In Marcy’s case, this connection was facilitated by almost daily activities such as
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
the imitation of single phonemes modeled by the
speech-language pathologist, exercises to kinesthetically identify where a particular sound was produced,
and the frequent fingerspelling of words—manually
representing them using a series of distinct handshapes, one made for each letter of a word. Sometimes
Marcy worked with the speech-language pathologist in
the therapy room, but often they moved to the resource
room or general education classroom, so that speech,
listening, and phonological awareness could be practiced using authentic materials such as books used in
reading lessons, graphic organizers that hung in the
rooms, and written rules displayed on the classroom
walls.
Ling (1976) explained that “while deaf children do
not have complete access to auditory information, they
seem to be able to use some cues derived from speechreading, residual hearing, and/or articulatory training
to discover the relationship between the sound of
speech and English orthography” [and to] “read individual words” (Waters & Doehring, 1990; p. 331). Yet
the phonological awareness of deaf students may be delayed (Dodd, 1974) and is apt to be seriously underspecified because not all of the phonetic distinctions
available from listening can always be perceived (Dodd,
1974; Hanson, 1991). Intelligible speech articulation
(oral language) is not essential for the acquisition of
phonological awareness (Conrad, 1979; Hanson, 1982;
Lichtenstein, 1985); neither is the ability to hear or
speechread (Bebko, 1998). Both deaf students who
sign, as well as those who do not, have been found to
utilize phonological awareness to distinguish possible
letter combinations from implausible ones and to recognize words. Neither sign nor fingerspelling interferes
with the development of phonological awareness (Harris & Beech, 1998; Lichtenstein, 1998; Miller, 1997).
Those working with Marcy believed that the development of phonological knowledge should be a priority
and integrated it into numerous language arts and
speech-stimulation experiences. Activities involving
rhyming, blending, segmenting, and discussing other
words with similar letter combinations were written
into Marcy’s IEP.
Development of word recognition. The term “phonics” is
used to describe various activities involving print and
phonemes. Adams and Beranek (1994) explained that
the “value of phonics instruction has been demonstrated with sobering consistency across literally hundreds of studies” (p. 3). The importance of developing
an understanding of phonics has been evidenced in
studies with typically developing children who are
normally developing, as well as with those who are
hearing- and language-challenged (Catts, 1991a,
1991b) and deaf (Paul, 1998).
To facilitate Marcy’s understanding of sound-toprint connections and other strategies for word recognition, specific techniques were used during KALL
guided-reading lessons. These are documented in daily
field notes and enabled us to compile a chronology of
Marcy’s developing word-recognition strategies in first
grade. (See Appendix 2.) The chronology provided us
with insight into the many strategies Marcy used to unlock unknown words as she read leveled text.
Marcy initially decoded unknown words with reliance on their first letter. If there was a picture cue available, then she used the initial consonant and the picture
to figure out the word and would typically say and sign
it. If the unknown word was not associated with a picture cue, Marcy’s strategy was to provide a word that
started with the same letter or letters as the one printed
in the text. Thus, she confused words such as “the,”
“there,” and“then.” Typical of readers at this early
stage of developing word-recognition skills, Marcy did
not attempt to segment unknown words beyond the
first letter or rely on her limited knowledge of syntax
to provide much assistance (Ehri, 1992). Explicit instruction taught her to look at all the aspects of a word
as she decoded it. Vowels had to be extended in pronunciation so that she could discern them. She had
more difficulty blending sounds than segmenting them,
but adult facilitation in utilizing word-recognition
strategies assisted Marcy in moving through Ehri’s
(1992) partial alphabetic and full alphabetic phase of
word learning.
Marcy also was aware of rhyming words and was
beginning to understand how this information could
help her to decode unknown words. Yet she sometimes
matched words by sight as much as sound. For example, one day during this time period she remarked,
“Look, Mom, that’s ‘toot’: It rhymes with ‘foot.’”
However, as the first-grade year progressed, Marcy was
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
helped to see the usefulness of noticing orthographic
information such as the sequences of letters in unknown words as “chunks” and to blend them. Thus,
she unlocked words by visually isolating chunks such
as phonograms and endings to “read by analogy”
(Gaskins, Ehri, Cress, O’Hara, & Donnelly, 1996/7). A
lesson during this time might include the following teacher prompts, “Marcy, look, you can read
‘hill.’ Cover up the ‘h’ and make the /p/ sound. What
word is that? Good. Now can you read the sentence
again?” or “You know ‘grill.’ Can you sign ‘grill’
⫹‘ing’? How do you say that word?” or “This part says
‘hill.’ Let’s practice saying ‘hill’ ⫹ ‘air’ ⫹ ‘e’ ⫹ ‘us’
(hilarious)—Good. Now, what do you think that
means?” or “Let’s make a list: ‘fill,’ ‘unfulfilled,’ ‘fulfillment.’” Field notes and videotaped language
samples document that eventually Marcy chunked
word parts independently, a behavior characteristic of
the consolidated alphabetic phrase of word learning
(Ehri, 1992). Marcy was assisted to sign or fingerspell
words, to compare word parts to other known words,
and to find small words within larger words. Thus,
Marcy progressed through the partial alphabetic and
full alphabetic stages and moved into the consolidated
stage (Ehri, 1992), where she demonstrated an ability
to use the orthography of words to assist her decoding
efforts. While orthography made decoding more efficient, sometimes Marcy would call upon her early approach to decoding: isolating sounds, segmenting, and
blending.
A difference between Marcy’s development of
word-recognition strategies and that of a hearing child
was that Marcy was reading many words that she had
never heard. Most hearing children have a “listening
vocabulary” of words they have heard repeatedly before learning to read. When Marcy came to a word with
an unfamiliar meaning, the teacher of the deaf explained it to her. Together they practiced decoding,
pronouncing, speechreading, and listening to the new
word. Language strategies such as defining, giving examples, and relating the word to an experience in Marcy’s life also were used to explain the meaning of words.
Thus, the language-reading connection did not involve
just the phonological aspects of a word but an understanding of its meaning (semantics) and of its place in
a sentence (syntax) as well.
165
Other first-grade experiences. Marcy was helped to spell the
words within a short sentence related to the text as a part
of each KALL intervention lesson. She began spelling
with a focus on individual sounds, but soon knowledge
of how to spell one word in a word family enabled her
to spell more words using that phonogram. With this
knowledge and her reading experiences, Marcy’s ability
to spell words increased dramatically, and she “began
to build an understanding of the orthography of
words” (Copeland et al., 1994, p. 28). Reinforced by her
teacher’s recording of the words she could spell, Marcy
demonstrated that she was “sensitive to the orthography of words” (Copeland et al., 1994, p. 28).
Marcy could read some books independently and
near the end of first grade, she especially enjoyed reading stories that previously had been read to her from
series such as those with the Clifford and Curious
George characters. She read enough independently to
acquire some words as a consequence of seeing them
repeatedly (Stanovich, 1986). Her parents were thrilled
that she was developing a degree of independence as a
reader. It was no secret that they valued reading and
fostered Marcy’s self-esteem and independence around
text. The family was “high” on what Mason (1992) labeled “intellectual literacy stimulation” (p. 216) and
made frequent trips to the bookstore to find books on
Marcy’s reading level.
Marcy was aware of the purpose of print, but she
did not have the language knowledge of her hearing
peers to participate with them in the languageexperience stories, response journal writing, and other
beginning writing activities that occurred in the firstgrade general education classroom. Marcy wrote mediated single sentences as a part of her KALL guidedreading lessons and sometimes as a part of lessons
during other work throughout the day, but written
expression was not an emphasis of first-grade instruction.
However, Marcy’s writing activities played a valuable role in enhancing her sensitivity to sound-symbol
correspondences and assisted her development of phonemic awareness. She evidenced emergent writing
skills. She often added a request to the family food list
on the refrigerator. When asked, she could “read” the
“word” so that it could be purchased by a parent at the
grocery store, because her “print” was completely in-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
discernible to anyone but herself. She labeled her possessions with the letter “M,” even though that also was
the initial of one of her sisters.
First-grade assessment results. Marcy’s basic conversational abilities improved in first grade. When her
speech was assessed during the first-grade year, she
produced approximately half of the phonemes evaluated in initial, medial, and final position using the
Goldman-Fristoe Articulation Test. Her ability to say
single words also was assessed with the Test of Language Development (TOLD), designed by Ling (1976)
and described in Luetke-Stahlman (1999), on which
she scored 96%. Marcy could articulate most phonemes at the word level, but her conversational speech
during discourse remained comprehensible 50% of the
time to an unfamiliar listener, as rated by the speechlanguage pathologist during classroom observations.
Receptive and expressive language scores revealed
minimal growth on standardized assessments (measuring cognitive-academic language proficiency) since
the previous year. For example, Marcy’s scores on
the Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test
(EOWPVT) on subtests of the ASSEST were below to
low average and equated to a hearing child 2 years
younger than she was. The appropriateness of her not
being educated in the general education classroom with
an educational interpreter simply translating the instruction of the teacher for Marcy’s preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade years was confirmed by these
standardized test scores. Now 7 years old, Marcy had
the language abilities of a 5-year-old but had not yet
acquired the cognitive-academic abilities required in
the typical classrooms.
A language sample, both spoken and signed, taken
in the middle of her first-grade year, illustrated Marcy’s struggle with English grammar (and her own
awareness of her deficiencies):
Marcy: Santa Claus brought me a new bike, that’s new,
really new. I use it every time—not snow—Dad
put in basement.
Teacher: So are you riding it now in the basement?
Marcy: No, mean Dad said, “You can ride in garage.”
Teacher: Oh, you can’t ride it on the street?
Marcy: No, too snow. Almost flat snow. Ask me another question.
At the beginning of first grade, Marcy exhibited
approximately one-third of the developmentally listed,
research-based literacy accomplishments for first grade
provided by Snow and her colleagues (1998). She understood the parts of books and their functions, tracked
print, pretended to read, and knew the letters of the alphabet. She identified upper and lower case letters, evidenced an understanding of the basic concepts of print,
and wrote several words independently on the written
vocabulary subtest of Clay’s (1993) assessment tools.
Five sources of reading data were available at the
end of first grade with which to evaluate Marcy’s literacy attainment. The first was a set of tasks used for assessment in the KALL intervention program. On a
phonological awareness measure, Marcy segmented
and blended 33% of the items given (Taylor, 1989) as
compared to 0% at the beginning of the year. She also
demonstrated the ability to segment and make soundto-print connections on Clay’s (1993) dictation task by
correctly writing 36 of the 37 phonemes spoken by an
adult.
Although Marcy was acquiring word-recognition
skills using multiple strategies (Appendix 2), such emphases are not common or accepted practice in many
deaf-education programs, because the development of
phonological awareness and phonic practice is thought
to be unproductive for deaf students (see Strong &
Prinz, 1997). We hope that projects such as this case
study will encourage teachers and speech-language pathologists to direct students’ attention to segmenting
and blending sounds, making sound-print connections,
and using multiple word-recognition strategies (e.g.,
chunking, attention to meaning via pictures, etc.). In
doing so, teachers must value the acquisition of phonological awareness, allot time and effort to its facilitation,
and assess and monitor acquisition. The child must be
expected to use sound-based strategies in attempting
to decode unknown words.
As a second indication of reading progress, Marcy
exhibited more of the language and literacy accomplishments for first grade suggested by Snow et al.
(1998). Some examples include comprehending nonfiction that was appropriately designed for first grade;
showing evidence of expanding her language repertory,
including increasing appropriate use of formal language registers; predicting and justifying what will
happen next in stories; and discussing how, why, and
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
what-if questions in sharing nonfiction text. As evidenced by running records, Marcy made fewer nonsensical errors, self-corrected, and monitored her
comprehension of words. These were age-appropriate
accomplishments (Snow et al., 1998).
A third evaluation source was Marcy’s progress
through 20 levels of first-grade text (Peterson, 1991) in
the KALL guided-reading program—and thereafter,
with first-grade stories chosen by her teacher of the
deaf. She demonstrated that she comprehended the
text she was reading and also that she comprehended
second-grade passages when given an informal reading
measure, the Qualitative Reading Inventory (Leslie &
Caldwell, 1990) at the end of the year.
A fourth reading-evaluation source was the
district-designed curriculum-based reading assessment
(CBA). (See Table 9.) On this, Marcy was required to
read authentic passages and answer comprehension
questions in writing. Her answers were blindly scored
by teachers trained in the use of a district scoring rubric. On the first-grade narrative task both at midyear
and end-of-the-year, Marcy was judged to be a “strong
performer,” as were 78% and 70%, respectively, of the
other first graders in her school. However, on the expository task, she fell into the category of “further development needed” both at the middle and end of the
year. In contrast, most of her hearing peers were
judged to be “strong performers.” Experiences with expository text exposes children to unique language
structures (Pappas, 1993) that Marcy simply could not
comprehend. Team members made note of this in the
objectives they set for the coming year.
The final evaluation source during first grade was
the Gates-MacGinitie (MacGinitie & MacGinitie,
1989) test administered for the first time at the end of
the year. Marcy’s scored at the 33rd percentile on the
Vocabulary subtest, and at the 34th percentile on the
Comprehension subtest. The total score of 30th percentile was within the low-average range but just below
the 33rd percentile, a cutoff used in some states to determine who is to qualify for special reading services
(McCormick, 1992). In fact, with a total score of below
the 40th percentile, Marcy would have received Title I
services in the school district in which she was enrolled, had she not already been served by specialeducation personnel.
In summary, Marcy made considerable language
167
and literacy progress in her first-grade year. She did
not score as a typical first grader on the expository
CBA measures and the standardized reading subtests,
but she demonstrated the development of wordrecognition strategies and of comprehension of narrative text. She evidenced low-average reading vocabulary ability and high-average ability to comprehend
narrative text. It may be surprising that Marcy was able
to read proficiently with such delayed receptive and expressive language abilities. However, this finding is
supported by the research. Both Huba and RamisettyMikler (1995) and Crain-Thoreson and Dale (1992)
found little correlation between reading achievement
and the receptive and expressive language development
of beginning readers.
Second Grade: Inching Forward
In second grade, Marcy was again educated in the resource room for language arts activities, a period that
included reading, writing, and spelling activities with a
teacher of the deaf and one deaf peer. She went with a
teacher of the deaf to the general classroom for math
soon after the year began, and by midyear, she also participated in the social studies and science activities
there. A teacher of the deaf mediated the instruction of
the general education teacher to a linguistic level that
Marcy could comprehend. This teacher also helped
Marcy practice cognitive-academic language abilities.
For example, mediation allowed Marcy more opportunities to express herself than would have otherwise
been afforded, as she was asked to provide examples
and characteristics or to repeat information supplied
by the classroom teachers or peers. Following the focus
of her IEP, the teacher of the deaf also assisted her to
define terms including a superordinate term and critical details, producing antonyms, synonyms, and analogies for novel vocabulary words. Because Marcy had
difficulty expressing English syntax, she always was
asked to define a word using the same format: A
is
a (superordinate) that (distinguishing characteristics).
This syntactic “frame” was required for several years.
Marcy participated regularly in both sharedreading and guided-reading activities, as she had the
year before (see Table 4). Shared reading was based on
the Macmillan basal that the district had adopted for
second graders. Both shared and guided reading were
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
facilitated by a teacher of the deaf. Guided-reading
procedures were adapted for second-grade readers by
Luetke-Stahlman and Nielsen (1995) by extending the
explicit discussion of concepts of print (e.g., a sentence
can continue to the next page, the meaning of an italicized or bolded word, and how to use the table of contents, index, and glossary). Adaptation also included
the addition of semantic activities, including defining
words, and determining antonyms, synonyms, and associating 10 vocabulary words from readings per week.
During the second-grade year, Marcy read books
or excepts from books (as packaged in the basal), including Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (Cleary, 1981), Lon Po Po
(Young, 1989), Two Bad Ants (Van Allsburg, 1988), The
Patchwork Quilt (Flournoy, 1985), and How My Parents
Learned to Eat (Friedman, 1987). Word lists collected in
her second-grade year showed evidence of the numerous strategies used to call attention to words in the
basal stories Marcy was reading. These included:
• vocabulary words written with a space between
each syllable (e.g., Ro ber ta, Ra mo na, ex haust ed);
• synonyms enclosed in a circle as an indication
that they meant the same thing (e.g., very cold, freezing);
• lists of words that began in similar ways (e.g., retell, return, remember, relive, repaint, relieve, redo, rewind,
remove, rewrite);
• related words (e.g., enjoy, overjoyed; absent, absentminded);
• spelling comparisons (e.g., thought, through; still,
sill);
• semantic continuum work (e.g., the words march,
walk, skip written in a row; the words morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, twilight, dark written in a row):
• use of word webs (e.g., a web of “trees” with
words such as maple, fir, peach, willow, and birch);
• attention to inflective affixes (e.g., berry, berries)
and derivational suffixes (e.g., misery, miserable); rhymes
(e.g., wedge, ledge);
• drawings to support word meaning (e.g., of a
wedge or whiskers);
• a list of partitives (e.g., deck of cards, suit of armor,
yards of material);
• the drawing of a family tree to explain this figure
of speech (e.g., Mr. and Ms. Quimby and their children,
Howie, Willa Jean, etc.);
• lists of figures of speech with explanations (e.g.,
mixed feelings);
• use of timelines (e.g., spring: Tanya was sick and
Grandma started the quilt, fall: Jim’s pants went into the
quilt, December: Grandma got sick, etc.);
• comparisons of contractions (e.g., ain’t, isn’t); and
• semantic and syntactic work that included first
expressing and then writing new vocabulary in sentences related to the text.
Following district guidelines, spelling work consisted of the discussion throughout the week of how to
spell a list of 10–15 arbitrary high-frequency words
and a Friday test. Marcy also began to participate in
process-writing activities in second grade. The focus
was on constructing a paragraph with an appropriate
opening sentence, several details, and a closing sentence that was different from the first sentence. The
classroom teacher and the teacher of the deaf planned
these assignments. A graphic organizer almost always
was used, the most common one being a hamburger of
which the top part of the bun represented the opening
sentence and so forth. Student-teacher conferencing
was frequent, and mini-lessons were highly tailored to
meet Marcy’s writing needs. In second grade, there was
no peer review or peer editing, and it concerned her
educational team members that Marcy rarely read her
written work to an audience.
It was difficult to find a sample of Marcy’s writing
from second grade that had not been edited during
writing-process activities. An unedited example was
found in a dialogue journal and is retyped exactly as
Marcy wrote it: I and my friend play outside. Friends
play ni them room. I and my friend eats laache (lunch).
In addition, Marcy wrote at least monthly to her
grandmother, who wrote back. She also enjoyed writing journal entries at school and could hardly wait each
day to see what the teacher would include in her written response. Marcy informed her parents of these exchanges with enthusiasm. She also began journaling on
her own at home and continues that practice today.
Assessment data from second grade demonstrated
that Marcy made steady observable progress in her
ability to comprehend the speech sounds she heard.
Approximately three and a half years after she first
heard speech, she was able to make finer distinctions
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
between words auditorially (without signs), but she
could not differentiate consonants that differed in
“place” of articulation and were at the end of words.
For example, “fab” and “fall” sounded the same to her.
Because Marcy did not hear speech sounds as hearing
children did, her spelling of “within word” patterns
challenged her (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 1996).
In tandem with her listening abilities, Marcy now
could articulate most of the basic phonemes, regardless of their position in words (scoring 51% on the
Goldman-Fristoe), but had trouble articulating the
first consonant of the second syllable in two-syllable
words. For example, she could pronounce “book” correctly, but said “booklet” as “book-it.”
The emphasis in first grade on phonological decoding skills with attention to orthographic aspects
of words prepared Marcy for second-grade wordrecognition tasks. After 4 years of exposure to grammatically correct signed English via the SEE system,
Marcy’s English grammar skills were slowly improving. Because the SEE system emphasizes English morphological structure, Marcy’s attention was focused on
inflectional and derivational differences in words in a
manner analogous to spoken words being pronounced
in distinct syllables (Carliste, 1995).
As compared with her receptive-language ability
the previous year, Marcy demonstrated improved
cognitive-academic abilities on tests designed to mirror the semantic and syntactic requirements of the general education classroom. Marcy’s comprehension of
sentence-level grammar improved from first to second
grade, especially on the CELF-Sentence Structure
subtest (9th percentile to 50th percentile). Test items
included such structures, as “Point to the boy who is
sleepy,” “Where does the boy play baseball?” and “The
boy saw a girl who was carrying a hammer.” On the
TOLD-Grammatical Understanding subtest, which
asked her to judge whether sentences were correct,
Marcy scored in the low-average range (25th percentile).
On expressive semantic language measures, Marcy
improved on the cognitive-academic language skills
targeted for facilitation on her IEP. She scored in the
low-average range on three LPT expressive semantic
subtests, the total LPT test, and on the TOLD-Word
169
Associations subtest, a measure similar to the LPTAssociations subtest. These tools asked Marcy to express and explain more than one element or label of a
concept (as on the receptive test, the PPVT), an ability
we refer to here as “depth of word knowledge.” The
tests enabled her to demonstrate conceptual schema or
networks of vocabulary understanding found to be critical for reading (e.g., Dickinson, Cote, & Smith, 1993;
Paul, 1996; Ruddell & Unrau, 1994).
On the only expressive grammar test given in second grade, the TOLD-Sentence Imitation subtest,
Marcy scored below average. However, she did improve
in her basic grammatical abilities, as evidenced in a
study conducted by Luetke-Stahlman, Griffiths, and
Montgomery (1998, 1999). Using a multiple baseline,
single-subject design, mediation was shown to facilitate specific English vocabulary, grammar, and textstructure behaviors that were targeted for mediated instruction by adults during reading activities. Weekly
videotaped retellings of stories and expository pieces
showed no change in behaviors that were not targeted
for mediation. Marcy also was seen to produce longer
retellings over the 9-month period. She increased the
number and variety of pronouns, conjunctions, and
modals she used; she increased her correct use of the
“do” verb and “be” verbs, and she increasingly used
“said” correctly.
Marcy moved toward the stage of “Growing Independence” in second grade (Gunning, 1996), a stage
marked by a reader’s knowledge and application of a
variety of basic word-recognition strategies and by attention to developing fluency, automaticity, and comprehension. While Marcy demonstrated about 50% of
the accomplishments listed by Snow et al. (1998) for
second-grade children, she still did not comprehend
second-grade nonfiction text. She also had trouble decoding multisyllable and nonsense words that were
more than two syllables in length, reading irregularly
spelled words, using increasing formal language registers, discussing similarities and events across stories,
and connecting and comparing information in nonfiction selections.
On the district’s narrative reading CBA, Marcy was
judged to be a “strong performer” both at midyear and
end-of-the-year, as were 51% and 70%, respectively, of
the other second graders in her school. On the exposi-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
tory CBA, she was deemed a “strong performer” midyear, as were 33% of her peers, but by the end of the
year, Marcy fell into the “further development needed”
category, although 61% of her peers were judged to be
“strong performers” in this category.
While Marcy might have developed enough understanding of semantic and syntactic knowledge of English to make progress in reading narrative text, our
field notes showed that she had observable difficulties
with the complexity of English required to understand
instruction in the general education classroom or to silently read textbooks. Her academic language needs
were illustrated in a sample taken near the end of the
year during a text retelling that included spoken and
signed utterances. Analysis of the sample revealed that
while Marcy was more able to convey story-structure
elements and showed that she understood what she had
read, she had severe grammatical difficulties that were
atypical of hearing children: “I want to tell you a good
story about sport. I will introduce the people who . . .
people. . . . I want to introduce Marco [fingerspelled]
and Sam [fingerspelled] is same boy. They same size.
But they look like brother.”
Marcy’s Gates-MacGinitie scores improved 10
percentile points from first to second grade and were
within the low average range. Apparently, the intensive
work to increase the depth of Marcy’s word knowledge
had improved her comprehension ability (Dickinson et
al., 1993). With such scores, Marcy no longer would
have qualified for special reading services given the criterion of district standards mentioned earlier. Marcy
discovered chapter books and those in a series, characteristic of as readers at the “Growing Independence”
stage (Gunning, 1996). Following family rules, Marcy
read independently each night for about 45 minutes.
Even today, she cannot part with the Boxcar Children
books she collected in second grade. “Ooh,” she’ll say,
“Those were such good stories!”
Although some of Marcy’s language and reading
abilities were similar to those documented for most
second-grade deaf children (see review by Paul, 1998;
Paul & Quigley, 1994), she did not evidence some of
the skills Gunning (1996) described for a reader at the
“Growing Independence” stage. For example, developing fluency is the hallmark of this phase, and because
Marcy did not “know” the meaning of many of the
words she read, fluency was interrupted, making it
difficult for her to read silently. Because she did not
have a “listening vocabulary” typical of other second
graders, the subtleties of language, such as the comedy
of humorous books containing “knock, knock” jokes,
escaped her. The challenge for members of her educational team was to continue to develop Marcy’s automaticity in decoding words while expanding her understanding of word meanings, so her cognitive energy
could focus more on comprehending longer units of
text.
As with her first-grade writing samples, most of
Marcy’s second-grade writing samples had been so
heavily edited by a teacher that they did not give evidence of Marcy’s writing ability. However, unedited
samples of written retells from a project (LuetkeStahlman et al., 1998; 1999) were analyzed using the
Kansas state-approved six-trait writing assessment rubrics. They revealed that the mean score on the rubric
for voice was 2.09 out of a possible 5 points; the rubric
scores for organization, word choice, and sentence fluency were each 2.75; for conventions, it was 2.88; and
for ideas, it was 3.09.
In summary, the majority of results from receptive
and expressive language measures, and from well as
reading subtests, illustrated that Marcy had developed
average, albeit low average, cognitive-academic linguistic abilities in her second-grade year. In particular, she
had acquired derivational and inflectional morphology
through speech and sign to assist her as she began independently using word-recognition strategies. Her
acquisition of this morphology, coupled with an everincreasing depth of word knowledge, allowed her to decode unknown words and discern the meaning of what
she read more accurately. This behavior is supported
by numerous researchers who found that morphological knowledge of English is evident by second grade
and that its acquisition is significantly correlated with
reading achievement, independent of phonological
awareness or intelligence (Bowey & Patel, 1988; Brittain, 1970; Carliste, 1995; Harris, 1975; Roth, Speece, &
Cooper, 1996; Rubin, 1988).
Third Grade: Linguistic and Reading Achievement
Is Maintained
Except for beginning weekly cello lessons to develop
her listening skills, Marcy’s speech and auditory activi-
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
ties were much the same as previously reported. Although these skills were no longer formally assessed,
goals and objectives were written, facilitated with
school subject content, and monitored annually for
Marcy’s IEP (see Table 5).
Marcy participated in the general education classroom with a teacher of the deaf for social studies, science, and math classes during her third-grade year. As
in the past, the teacher of the deaf accompanied Marcy
to mediate the instruction of the general education
teacher to a linguistic level that Marcy could comprehend, asked Marcy intermittent questions, and allowed
her numerous opportunities to express herself. Marcy
was assisted, as she had been the previous year, to develop cognitive-academic language. Reading and writing activities were programmed much as they had been
previously, with new objectives written as old ones were
met. Examples of concepts of print that were explained
during the year were the functions of a hyphen and how
italics are sometimes used to indicate stage directions.
Tests were sometimes adapted to meet Marcy’s limited
language skills; when other third graders were asked to
write a paragraph explaining, for example, three ways
to use a pulley, Marcy received full credit for merely
listing her answers.
With regard to spelling instruction, the teacher of
the deaf utilized district materials developed for hearing third graders and taught Marcy in the resource
room. Although the curriculum centered on the spelling of arbitrary words on a Friday test, during this year
the district also developed a personalized spelling
booklet for each student. In addition to tips on spelling
strategies and basic rules, it included a page for each
letter of the alphabet, a list of some words on each of
these pages, and many blanks so that students could
add words that they wanted to be able to spell. The
booklets allowed students to be more independent
spellers when they were engaged in process writing activities. Marcy’s teachers were faithful users of the
spelling booklets in third through sixth grades.
Assessment-based intervention decisions, a low
teacher-to-student ratio, and a supportive home environment remained integral components of Marcy’s
language and literacy instruction.
Starting with second semester of third grade, vocabulary became the focus of both home and school activities. Marcy’s family attempted to play a variety of
171
vocabulary games with her, both as board games and
on the computer. The teacher of the deaf selected 5 to
10 expository words a week to analyze with Marcy as
she had done previously. They would work several
times a week to pronounce and blend the phonemes of
these words, as well as to discuss their semantic attributions, such as synonyms, antonyms, associations, and
distinguishing characteristics. Examples and nonexamples of concepts were routinely contrasted (e.g., a
stream is a small or narrow, flowing body of water. A
river is a nonexample, because although it contains water and is flowing, it is not narrow or small). Nippold
(1985) found that such skills correlated with academic
success, which reinforced the importance of this focus
for Marcy.
The information about each word was kept in a
notebook for reference, along with figurative expressions and multiple meanings of words discussed. A variety of graphic organizers was used in conjunction
with vocabulary activities, especially a semantic continuum. For example, if the expression “sheets of rain,”
was discussed, it was put in context along a continuum
of words associated with rain, such as drizzle, rain,
downpour, torrents, raining cats and dogs, and so forth.
These activities may have increased Marcy’s basic, routine vocabulary skills, but they did not seem to influence her score on a test of receptive and expressive
language skills required for success in the general
classroom.
During third grade, Marcy showed many indications of reading enjoyment and interest in new vocabulary words, despite the limited progress in her language
growth demonstrated on formal tests. For example, she
often asked the meaning of words and figurative
phrases she came upon in her reading and would risk
using new words in conversations. Some examples that
were discussed while reading Charlotte’s Web (White,
1952) were school of fish and feeling poorly. When queried
about where she had learned a new word, Marcy would
often reference a previous story or discussion. She began to scan articles in the newspaper as she ate breakfast and would often comment on current events she
read about in the newspaper or on the captioned television news. Her grandmother started to send her a children’s science magazine, which she read the day it arrived every month. Marcy’s parents continued to keep
books of an appropriate difficulty available in several
172
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
comfortable locations around their home. For example,
a low shelf was kept stocked near the couch where
Marcy waited for the school bus each morning and another near the kitchen table.
Writing continued to be a problem for Marcy. An
unedited entry from a journal she kept at home documents her delayed development of written language
skills:
Dear Dariy,
Hi draiy today my sister mary pat got wasp
shunned her hand and she said, “That she saw two
wasps on her and she yelled so loud at her friend’s
house.” I told her I was sorry for her. Mary Pat is
now at our house for dinner and change her clothes
because she been swimming and she needed mecdice for her hand.
[No new date]
Today I came back from Scattergood. It is
kinda of boring over there and my sister and I was
figting a little. One thing was a lot of fun is getting
wet and have water ballon play. My sister Hannah
is going to Scatter good school for this year in Iwoa
for one year.
Although few formal language measures were administered in third grade, Marcy demonstrated continued improvement in her receptive ability to comprehend academic language, scoring within the low and
mid-ranges. Her ability to identify age-appropriate
pictures of vocabulary words on the PPVT moved into
the low-average range for the first time.
Expressively, Marcy also scored low-average on
two word-level grammar tasks. On a subtest of word
associations (the CELF Word Class), she scored in the
37th percentile in identifying words that belonged together. (An example of a test item is “Button, shirt,
chair—which two go together?”) These types of items
seemed to reflect the depth of word knowledge being
facilitated in reading activities. On the CELF-Word
Structure subtest (on which she also scored within the
37th percentile), Marcy had to complete a sentence
with the correct grammatical form. Examples were (a)
“The girl has a notebook. The notebook belongs
to
.” (b) “The children are playing a game. This is
the game the children
”; and (c) “Neither Mom
nor Dad helped the twins. They got dress
.” That
Marcy did well on this subtest was important. Investigators have found that morphological awareness is routinely called upon as a decoding strategy by third grade
(Apel & Swank, 1999) and that poor morphological
awareness contributes to poor decoding skills. Marcy
seemed to be applying the morphology she had learned
from the SEE system, in which derivational and inflectional affixes were marked by signs added to root
words.
On two expressive sentence-level tasks, Marcy
demonstrated below-average ability. Leong (1984)
studied third graders and found that a syntactic/
semantic task accounted for more reading variance
(30%) than phonological awareness (8%) in the
mid-elementary grades. Carliste (1995) mentioned
three other studies reporting a correlation between
syntax and reading, but in general, there is little research regarding syntax and reading in the upper
elementary grades.
Marcy continued to develop as a reader in her
third-grade year. Along with all district third graders,
Marcy took the Iowa Basic Skills reading subtests and
scored in the low-average range for both reading vocabulary and passage comprehension. Her reading
achievement was similar on the Gates-MacGinitie
reading test. Thus, Marcy seemed to maintain the linguistic and reading achievement she had evidenced the
previous year.
Fourth Grade: The Reading Vocabulary and
Comprehension Gap
In fourth grade, Marcy was again integrated with her
peers in the general classroom with a teacher of the
deaf for social studies, science, and math classes. She
joined the school orchestra and continued to see the
speech-language pathologist daily to work on articulation. As part of the district spelling curriculum, the
spelling booklets, described previously, were used
again. Marcy’s goals and objectives for listening and
speech articulation involved her pronouncing multisyllablic words and becoming better understood during
extended conversations about narrative and expository
topics. Thus, Marcy’s conversational abilities were targeted to move from the basic to the academic level (see
Table 6).
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
Marcy continued to have weekly shared- andguided-reading sessions with her teacher of the deaf
focusing on strategies for dealing with a variety of
texts. These lessons were reduced to three times a week
because of scheduling conflicts. Yet Marcy’s team
found time for these activities because they were aware
of their importance with beginning readers (Clay,
1991). The strategy instruction emphasized in Marcy’s
literary activities also was found to be helpful to older
readers. Pressley and Woloshyn (1995), among others,
emphasized teaching students to read strategically is
a crucial step in producing proficient readers. Often,
however, teachers minimize students’ need for strategic reading (Caverly, Mandeville, & Nicholson, 1995).
Marcy continued to learn more sophisticated concepts of print and word-recognition skills, with an emphasis on the orthography and morphology of words,
in fourth grade. An example of a concept of print at
this level was knowing that a reference to a figure, such
as “2.1” meant that the figure was the first figure in the
second chapter. The importance of the various sizes of
headings, also found in textbooks, is another example.
Important vocabulary words from school subjects
were defined and discussed by Marcy and the teacher
of the deaf, as they were in third grade. The sheets on
which this work was done were sent home on Fridays
for use in conversations and included such topics as a
discussion on rhyming words, words spelled in similar
ways, and the use of the words in sentences unrelated
to school subjects. Marcy’s education team members
persisted in enriching the depth of her knowledge of
vocabulary words, aware of their importance to reading
comprehension (Tabors, 1996).
Key vocabulary words were manipulated in a second way during fourth grade to reinforce orthographic
patterns. Marcy’s teacher of the deaf began a wordstudy notebook that evolved in form but was used several times a week in the fourth- through sixth-grade
years. It was organized by the sounds of letters. For example, if the word “brain” from her science book was
discussed, Marcy was asked to write it in her word
study notebook. To do so, Marcy would look for the
page that had the long /a/ sound. This was labeled as
A1 in the notebook (because the letter “a” has several
sounds associated with it) and a list of 10 spellings of
the long /a/ sound appeared down the left side of the
173
page (i.e., a, ai, aigh, au, ay, e, ei, eig, eigh, and ey). Three
spaces were provided after each spelling, so that words
could be entered according to how many syllables were
in them. To add the word “brain” to the booklet,
Marcy looked down the left-hand column of the page,
past the various spellings of the long /a/ sound, found
the “ai” spelling, and wrote the “brain” in the first
space after it. The word “grainy” could be written in
the second blank, being a two-syllable word.
For about the last month of fourth grade, Marcy
participated in the general classroom reading activities
with her hearing peers for the first time. These centered on a book about the Titanic disaster. Marcy, who
had seen the movie popular in the theaters at the time,
was estactic to read and discuss the story with her peers
and saw her inclusion in the general classroom as evidence that she was a “good reader.” During the 4-week
unit, Marcy used an interpreter to comprehend the remarks of the general education teacher and peers. The
teacher of the deaf was often in the classroom also,
ready to provide as much mediation as was necessary,
but just as important, not assisting if she was not
needed. Marcy successfully completed unit projects,
quizzes, and tests, as evaluated by the general education classroom teacher.
The school district adopted a new spelling curriculum in Marcy’s fourth-grade year, and the speechlanguage pathologist based her work on speech articulation, speechreading, and listening around these
lessons. This resulted in the creative scheduling of time
for speech articulation, listening work, and spelling.
The approach included an equal number of words
taken from Marcy’s process writing, words that did not
follow sound-to-letter patterns, and words that were
patterned (or rule-based). Word sorts and discovery of
patterns were not emphasized at school (Bear et al.,
1996) but were practiced about once a week at home.
Also at home, Marcy engaged in “Making Words” activities (Cunningham & Hall, 1995), in which small
words are made from letters. She completed approximately a lesson daily for 4 months in the spring.
In Marcy’s fourth-grade year, very little receptive
or expressive language data were collected. She remained challenged to comprehend age-appropriate vocabulary and sentence-level grammar, scoring within
the below average range (13th percentile) on the Oral
174
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
and Written Language Scale (OWLS) receptive and
expressive semantic and syntactic test. On the Rhode
Island Test of Language Structure, a measure of receptive grammar, Marcy did not understand structures
that a hearing 7-year-old would comprehend. For example, she did not comprehend passive reversals and
complex sentences used in questions that included picture support. Consequently, she could not comprehend
information that contained complex grammatical constructions she read from her social studies and science
texts or from the Internet.
Marcy was given the LPT midyear of fourth grade,
a standardized test of semantic knowledge that had not
been administered since second grade. She scored in
the average range on most of the subtests, measures
that reflected the cognitive-academic skills targeted in
her reading program. This was important, because Tabors (1996) found that receptive vocabulary, wordrecognition skills, and expressive-meaning skills, such
as the ability to formulate definitions, were significantly
linked to reading comprehension by the end of fourth
grade.
Expressively, Marcy scored below average on two
of the LPT semantic measures, but five other LPT
subtests were in the low-average range. Her total LPT
score (44th percentile) fell in the low-average range and
seemed to indicate that she was not losing ground in
her ability to express cognitive-academic concepts.
Marcy continued to have difficulty expressing English grammar. She scored below average on the
CELF-Formulated Sentences subtest, a concern to her
team, because Flood and Menyuk (1983) found that the
ability of fourth graders to identify ungrammatical
sentences in spoken language was related significantly
to reading achievement as measured by both the
Standford Achievement Test (SAT) and the GatesMacGinitie reading tests. Marcy’s team identified
comprehension and expression of grammatical constructions, beyond the simple sentence level, as an area
of concentration and once again planned to specifically
facilitate word and sentence syntax using school subject content.
By the end of fourth grade, Marcy had been exposed to English signed in a grammatically accurate
manner for 7 years. In addition, her team continued to
improve her development of cognitive-academic lan-
guage (Cummins, 1984). Some researchers found that
language-challenged children had to attain a threshold
level of competence in English grammar before they
could progress in reading their dominant language
(Matluck & Tunmer, 1979). Cummins (1984) agreed,
after extensively reviewing the second-language acquisition research, estimating that while it takes a student
only about 2 years to acquire conversational skills, it
takes approximately 5 to 7 years to develop academiclanguage proficiency. If this was correct, Marcy was
just on the verge of obtaining the cognitive-academic
(decontextualized) language skills required in the
“Reading to Learn” stage of reading development
(Gunning, 1996).
Marcy demonstrated about 25% of the third-grade
accomplishments listed by Snow and her colleagues
(1998) by the end of fourth grade. For example, she
could use letter-sound correspondences and structural
analysis to decode words, read chapter books independently, and take part in creative responses to text.
However, she had trouble identifying content specific
words affecting comprehension, summarizing major
points, and answering “what if ” questions about nonfiction text. She could not use information to examine
bases of hypothetical and opinion pieces, infer word
meanings, or incorporate literary words and grammar
into her own writing.
Examples of objectives written in Marcy’s IEP to
increase her reading comprehension included making
a word web of synonyms and antonyms of targeted
reading vocabulary, fingerspelling unknown words in a
chapter or story, and saying words with prefixes in syllables.
On the Gates-MacGinitie reading test, Marcy
scored within the low-average range on the vocabulary
test (21st percentile) and similarly on the Woodcock
Reading Mastery vocabulary assessment (16th percentile Word Comprehension). This ability was typical of
deaf students (see review by Paul, 1998). For example,
Paul reported (1998) that fourth- through sixth-grade
deaf subjects scored in the mid-second-grade range
compared to hearing norms on the Stanford Achievement Test-Word Meaning subtest.
However, Marcy did not follow the trend of typical
deaf students in her ability to comprehend what she
read. While she scored within the low-average range
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
on the Woodcock Reading Passage Comprehension
subtest (20th percentile), she was within the highaverage range on the Gates-MacGinitie-Comprehension subtest (62nd percentile). The gap between
her ability to select definitions for vocabulary words
and to comprehend passages also occurred in the fifthand sixth-grade years.
While there was no formal writing assessment during the fourth-grade year, Marcy was able to write in
connected sentences when she was asked to complete
short answers on a test about the book she had read
with the hearing fourth graders. For example, when
asked to give several reasons why the Titanic disaster
should never have taken place, Marcy responded as follows (unedited): “This disaster should not taken place
because capttain refused to slow down. There were not
enough lifeboats, or life belts. Needed to more mowen
and children from streege. It was unsinkable ship!!!”
This was an improvement over third grade when she
only listed information because she could not express
herself in sentences.
In summary, in Marcy’s fourth-grade year, it appears that she enjoyed reading and was an average narrative reader who could participate successfully in the
reading activities of her hearing peers. Low-average
language skills seemed to contribute to the challenge
she experienced with expository text and while writing
beyond the sentence level.
Fifth Grade: Narrative and Expository Reading
Ability Is Achieved
In fifth grade, Marcy was integrated with a teacher of
the deaf into most school subjects. For the first time,
she was considered a fifth grader who went to the resource room rather than a resource-room student who
came into the general classroom as in years past.
As a fifth grader, Marcy returned to the resource
room for reading and writing tutorials. Examples of
concepts of print from this year included the use of the
pronunciation guides in her social studies textbook and
how to type e-mail addresses. She saw the speechlanguage pathologist 30 minutes a day for spelling—
using the district curriculum adopted the previous
year. Marcy practiced articulating her spelling words
and listened to sentences containing them. As evi-
175
denced in the editing sheet Marcy used throughout the
year during process writing, it was clear that she was
expected to attend to spelling, apply spelling rules and
known patterns, and check for punctuation, capitalization, and so on.
Marcy read novels with her class in fifth grade,
such as Cracker Jackson (Byers, 1985) and Bridge to Terabithia (Paterson, 1972). According to the general education teacher, Marcy demonstrated ample evidence of
comprehension during book discussions with peers
and responded appropriately to questions posed about
text structure. She also made predictions and interpreted personality traits of main characters. Marcy
wrote short answers to comprehension questions, and
although she did not always use correct English grammar, she was able to write explicitly enough to earn the
majority of points possible on her assignments. Her
teacher reported that she also demonstrated evidence
of comprehension during social studies and science
lectures, completed applied projects and research reports, and gave required class speeches (phrases of
which had to be reverse interpreted if her speech was
not clear). However, Marcy still had difficulty comprehending the school subject textbooks or information
from the Internet without linguistic mediation by the
teacher of the deaf (see Table 7 for percentile scores).
Marcy wrote for several purposes during the fifthgrade year and liked most to write letters to her grandmother. Her letters were usually a page or so in length
and interesting to a reader who did not know Marcy’s
daily routines and current interests. She liked to experiment with different lettering styles as she wrote, using
different sizes and shapes of letters to emphasize particular words. At school, Marcy also wrote book reports, response papers to text she read for academic
subjects, and journal entries. She participated in Writer’s Workshop with her hearing classmates and conferenced with the general education teacher. Hearing
peers edited her work, as did the teacher of the deaf
and the general education teacher.
Because Marcy had difficulty with word choice and
grammar when she wrote, the teacher of the deaf designed writing activities based on the novel the class
was reading. These often involved further use of vocabulary words or figurative expressions taken from the
story that were not familiar to Marcy. She was asked to
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
use these new words and phrases to describe situations
first related to the story and then unrelated to it. Sometimes grammatical constructions discussed while reading were purposely practiced later in the week using
content from social studies and science topics. These
constructions were listed and sent home on Friday, so
that Marcy’s parents could use them over the weekend.
Both at home and school, Marcy also demonstrated
that she was an avid reader. Her bedroom was well
stocked with a variety of reading materials, and she often discussed new academic concepts with her parents.
She loved reading and discussing ideas, often including
the phrase, “I didn’t know that,” with a sense of awe.
Two activities are provided to exemplify how teachers and parents discussed literacy-related material with
Marcy and to illustrate her familiarity with the process
of reflective questioning, in which she is helped to find
an answer rather than simply told one. In the first example, Marcy tells her mother that she does not understand the word “illiterates” in the story she is reading.
When her mother looks over to begin a conversation
about it, Marcy flips over a piece of paper and picks up
a pencil, knowing “the routine” and that these things
will be needed. Her mother writes the word “literature” on the paper Marcy has provided and asks her
what it means. As Marcy correctly responds, her
mother circles the letters “lit.” Next, they discuss that
her mother has been working on lectures at home about
“literacy.” Marcy says that the word means “reading”
and writes “literacy” beneath “literature” so that the
common letters are in alignment. When her mother
references the word “illiterates” again and asks what
“il” means, Marcy quickly replies “not, like in illegal—
not legal.” Then, not waiting to be asked, Marcy looks
again at the target word and says, “It means not reading.” At this point, her mother smiles, tells her she is
very close, and they refer to the book to discuss the
word “illiterates” in the context of the passage.
The second example is a conversation Marcy had
with her mother near the end of her fifth-grade year
while independently reading the newspaper:
Marcy: It says here, it’s the turn of the millennium
(fingerspelled). What’s millennium mean?
Mom: It’s like million, M-I-L (fingerspelled), but it
means that almost a thousand years have gone by.
What’s the year right now?
Marcy: 1999.
Mom: Right. And when it’s New Year’s, what will the
year be?
Marcy: 2000.
Mom: Right, so it is the end of the 1900s, and it
will turn to 2000—a new millennium. What do you
think “turn of the century” means?
At the midyear fifth-grade IEP meeting, it was reported that Marcy’s speech was comprehensible to an
unfamiliar listener 75% of the time when she was talking about narrative and expository texts. To calculate
this data, the speech-language pathologist videotaped
Marcy discussing a story she read and a science topic
she had studied. The speech-language pathologist then
asked an unfamiliar noneducator to listen to Marcy
without watching her on the TV monitor and to repeat
what she was saying.
It was evident that Marcy now understood the
value of articulate speech, took pride in her ability to
independently order in a restaurant, follow directions
to the restroom, and locate desired items in stores. But,
as important, if she was required to give a book report
or a presentation on something she had studied, Marcy
was confident in her ability to be understood. She knew
how to question her audience to ensure that they were
understanding what she was saying, and she knew repair strategies to utilize should they be needed (e.g.,
provided synonyms, reworded, demonstrated, etc.).
As in past years, Marcy’s receptive vocabulary only
improved minimally (PPVT 25th percentile in fifth
grade, as compared to 20th percentile in fourth grade)
and remained in the low-average range. Basically, this
meant she was making a year’s progress in a year’s time,
but never more.
Expressively, Marcy improved in her ability to deal
with aspects of decontextualized language. For example, on the CELF-Word Classes subtest she scored
at the 37th percentile in fourth grade and improved to
the 50th percentile in fifth grade. She also scored in
the high-average range on the LPT Attributes subtest
(89th percentile) and in the low-average range on three
other LPT semantic subtests. On the Similarities and
Differences subtests, Marcy scored in the belowaverage range, largely because she did not have the
grammar to express the comparisons required. However, her total score on the LPT, which taps depth of
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
word knowledge, was within the high-average range
(56th percentile) and was her strongest performance
to date.
On the district CBA, Marcy’s teacher reported that
she did “well” on the narrative section compared to her
fifth-grade hearing peers. She officially was rated to
“be a strong performer” on both the narrative and expository portions of the measure, an improvement compared to past years. Marcy’s achievement as reported
by her teacher was corroborated by standardized reading test scores that again fell in the average range at the
end of fifth grade (e.g., Gates-MacGinitie Vocabulary
35th percentile, and Comprehension 63rd percentile).
Similar results were obtained using the Woodcock
Reading Mastery subtests, demonstrating an improvement from fourth to fifth grade. Thus, she had not
reached a plateau in her reading abilities, as most deaf
students do (Paul, 1998).
An examination of the items Marcy missed on the
Gates-MacGinitie Vocabulary subtest revealed that she
often selected a word associated with—but not a synonym for—the target word. For example, given the target word mystery, Marcy’s answered “detective”; the
correct answer was “secret.”
Marcy comprehended a variety of text types on the
Gates-MacGinitie Comprehension measure, that although short in length, included seven expository
pieces, three narrative stories, one biography, and a
poem. She had difficulty with some of the expository
and descriptive passages, which were never more than
about three paragraphs in length, and with the poem.
With regard to writing in fifth grade, Marcy scored
four “5s” and two “4s” on the Kansas state six-trait
writing assessment. This suggests that she demonstrated above-average ability, since a “3” score is considered an average mark on the assessment rubric.
Teachers in the district who could identify neither student nor school scored the writing samples.
Sixth Grade: Reading to Learn
Our data collection ends with Marcy’s sixth-grade
year, her last year in the public, neighborhood elementary school that she had attended since preschool (9
years). As a sixth grader, she again was tutored in the
resource room and went to the speech-language pathologist for spelling. Books she read in sixth grade in-
177
cluded Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (Coerr,
1986), Ferret in the Bedroom, Lizards in The Fridge (Wallace, 1986), and Tuck Everlasting (Babbitt, 1975). Her
teacher of the deaf targeted five vocabulary words from
a novel and five from school subject textbooks each
week and asked Marcy to provide characteristics, associations, synonyms, and antonyms for the words as in
the previous years. Word derivations and the meaning
of the words were discussed and added to her wordwork notebook, as had also been done for the past 3
years. Marcy was required to use each new term in a
sentence, as a form of oral rehearsal, and then write the
sentence correctly. Thus, she was pushed a little further each year to apply word-level decoding, word
meaning, and spelling strategies (see Table 8 for
scores).
Guided reading occurred several times a week in
the resource room, so that the teacher of the deaf could
facilitate higher-level thinking skills and metacognition. She developed a monitoring sheet to track conversations involving synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of
ideas from the novels. Specific practice with the grammar to express these kinds of thoughts was written by
the teacher of the deaf and discussed (e.g., “China and
Japan are similar because . . .” or “China and Japan are
different in that China . . .”). Marcy was then asked to
use these constructions in her own writing about the
novel. The same tasks were completed using social
studies and science content. For example, on the teacher’s tracking sheet for “evaluation,” she indicated that
she and Marcy discussed how Marcy felt about the way
the nomads were treated in India. Sometimes Marcy
was asked to combine sentences using specific conjoining words, such as otherwise, unless, while, however, although, and whenever based on the novel that the class
was reading or a school subject topic. The conjoining
words were from the OWLS, a test of receptive and
expressive language on which Marcy barely scored
within the low-average range (16th percentile). An example from the teacher’s explicit instruction sheet was
as follows: “Combine these sentences—The sun is an
average star. The sun is a huge ball of gas.”
A writing sample from the sixth-grade year was
gathered the last week of the school and is included below. It was taken from an application for a music scholarship for which Marcy applied. Although the use of a
hyphenated word and the use of the convention for the
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
word “with” would not be expected in this formal context, we find their use illustrative of Marcy’s continued
awareness of challenging concepts of print. There is
evidence of within word spelling (Bear et. al., 1996)
difficulties as well. In addition, our experience is that
Marcy’s emergent use of suffixes (e.g., “ist,” “al,”
“tion,” “ment,” and “ful”) is uncommon when compared to the writing of most deaf children and reflective of the SEE language to which she was exposed.
Marcy’s attempt to use complex sentence structures
was also a positive indication that she independently
attempted to use the more difficult English practiced
with her teacher of the deaf during the year.
One of my most memory was playing “Perpetural
Motion” for the Mother’s Day Tea at my school. I
suceeded in that tea party. When I were done w/
that song, everyone were clapping and made me
feel good. If I keep playing, I will get good complianments and will become a suceeful celloist.
Marcy was given the LPT expressive semantic test
in the middle of her sixth-grade year by the school
speech-language pathologist. She scored in the lowaverage range on five subtests: Associations, Similarities, Multiple Meanings, Attributes, and Categorization (49th percentile), which was about at the mean.
Overall, she improved compared to the previous year
on all subtests except Attributes. Marcy’s total LPT
score also fell in the low-average range (44th percentile). Her score on the Difference subtest was in the
above-average range and was much higher than the
previous year (66th percentile, compared to 13th percentile).
Marcy was also administered the OWLS midyear
in sixth grade. Her Listening Comprehension subtest
score was barely low-average (16th percentile), but her
score on the Oral Expression subtest much better (39th
percentile). The combination of the two scores was also
low-average and an improvement compared to her
score in fourth grade (13th percentile), the last time she
took this test. The age-equivalent for Marcy’s total
OWLS indicated a 2-year delay in cognitive-academic
language proficiency.
Marcy’s reading achievement was measured several
ways in sixth grade. On the CBA, she was rated as a
“strong performer” at both mid- and end-of-the-year
assessments. She scored 100% and 80% on these evaluations. She was rated as a “progressing reader”
on comprehension of expository text at the midyear
(79%) and a “strong performer” in May (87%). In addition, Marcy earned a 100% score on the “study skills/
information resources” measure, a 100% on the “listening comprehension” measure, and a 96% on the
“construction of meaning” measure at the end of her
sixth-grade year.
Marcy’s scores on standardized measures of reading comprehension parallel the sixth-grade performance assessments of the district (CBA). She scored
within the high-average range on the Illinois Test of
Basic Skills (ITBS) Passage Comprehension subtest
(65th percentile) and at the mean on the Woodcock
Reading Mastery comprehension subtest (Woodcock,
1998). Achievement on reading vocabulary measures
was mixed (Woodcock 59th percentile, ITBS 24th percentile).
Toward the end of the year, all district sixth graders
wrote a composition, without teacher assistance, given
a choice of several topics. The teacher of the deaf, who
observed Marcy begin the writing assignment, reported that she was pleased to see Marcy independently draw a graphic organizer to chart her ideas before beginning to write. Samples were sent to the
district administration for blind review by a team of
trained raters who used the state-mandated six-trait
rubric. For four traits (ideas and content, organization,
voice, and sentence fluency), Marcy scored a “3,” but
she scored a “2” for her use of conventions and a “1”
for word choice. On the Written Expressive Scale of
the OWLS, which she wrote when she was exactly 12
years old, Marcy received a standard score of 107, an
age equivalent of 12.0 years, and grade equivalent of
sixth grade.
To summarize Marcy’s sixth-grade year, it can be
reported that most of both her receptive and expressive
cognitive-academic language abilities were within the
low-average range, and she was an average reader of
both narrative and expository text when compared to
hearing peers and norms. Her academic writing skills
were also average when compared to hearing norms but
reflected the vocabulary challenges she had faced continually throughout the elementary years.
Marcy’s educational team met in May 2000, for a
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
transitional meeting to prepare for middle school.
They felt that Marcy had developed the cognitiveacademic language abilities to succeed when educated
with her peers and recommended that she be enrolled
in the general curriculum for all subjects in middle
school, going to the resource room to be tutored by a
teacher of the deaf for one period daily.
Case Study Summary
We described 9 years of language and literacy development of a deaf child, Marcy, who had no language and
no literacy-related experiences, when she began preschool at 4 years of age. Although Marcy scored low
in language in the early grades and was able to read
commensurate with her peers as a beginning reader,
assessment-based language and literacy instruction became more critical as the demands of reading increased
in the middle elementary grades. Initially, Marcy
scored higher on narrative measures of comprehension
than she did on expository measures, but by fifth grade,
she read both genres commensurate with her hearing
peers (see Table 9 for district CBA scores).
Marcy was the recipient of excellent reading instruction in a public-school system throughout the elementary years. Responsible professionals simultaneously assessed, monitored, and integrated several
areas of communication and literacy, using effective
teaching methodology to emphasize word recognition
and comprehension. They planned daily, individualized, interactive activities always connected to the curriculum and supported by the research literature. Several aspects of these lessons were reinforced at home.
Just as the challenges of the reading task are different
at different stages/phases of development, lessons were
focused differently at the various reading stages.
When looking at Marcy’s language and literacy
across the years, it becomes clear that research-based
instruction resulted in reading achievement atypical of
deaf students. As a preschool and kindergarten student, Marcy, as most children, was at the emergent
reader stage. The emphasis on phonological awareness
and English-language enhancement provided the foundation for Marcy’s success as a beginning reader.
As Marcy moved from being an emergent reader to
actually reading on her own in first grade, team mem-
179
bers were guided by the research on how word learning
develops during this period, and they planned reading
lessons and language intervention using typical firstgrade guided reading materials. Emphasis initially was
on teaching Marcy to segment, isolate, and blend
speech sounds whenever she could to decode words. As
she progressed in first grade, emphasis turned to use
of orthographic patterns. From the start, Marcy was
taught to employ multiple strategies (e.g., phonemic,
semantic, and structural cues; rereading; etc.) to unlock
unknown words. As a beginning reader, Marcy was assisted in comprehending first at the word level, then at
the phrase level, and finally with larger chunks of text.
She was helped to see the advantage of using multiple
strategies when she did not comprehend the language
of text. In addition, team members focused on the need
to go beyond the preschool and kindergarten emphasis
on basic informal, routine language, and they began to
attend to the decontextualized, cognitive-academic
language required to succeed in school.
Marcy moved into the “Growing Independence”
stage late in first grade. She had a bank of words that
she knew by sight, as well as basic word-recognition
and comprehension strategies. Marcy was assisted to
use morphology to recognize words and to comprehend what she was reading at this transitional phase.
The opportunity to hear (see) and use these grammatical aspects of English seemed especially important at
this time. By second grade, Marcy’s ability to retell a
piece was emphasized, and her narrative comprehension was average or higher when compared to hearing
peers thereafter. While Marcy was generally successful
with narrative text early in her reading development,
semantic issues continued to challenge her attempts to
comprehend some aspects of narrative. Acknowledging
her semantic weaknesses, teachers designed reading
lessons that included discussion of the many levels of
meaning associated with vocabulary words, figurative
phrases, and sentences. Syntactic weaknesses were specifically noted and their development facilitated as
well. The semantic and syntactic emphases continued
over the years and shifted to meet the demands of text.
Attention to the decontextualized, cognitiveacademic language required to succeed in school
started in first grade and continued into the intermediate grades, when Marcy’s reading challenges were pri-
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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
marily expository text, typical of the “Reading to
Learn” phase (Gunning, 1996). As Marcy encountered
more vocabulary, more atypical vocabulary, and more
complex grammatical constructions, her teachers continued to create explicit language lessons that utilized
school subject text as the context of lessons. Growth of
semantics and syntax was facilitated through mediated
conversations about more sophisticated concepts of
print, text structures, unfamiliar content area concepts,
and graphics common to expository text using language that was not a part of Marcy’s familiar, personal,
“oral” language repertoire.
Conclusion
In this study, a student who did not demonstrate the
same phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic
language skills as her typically developing peers was assisted to acquire age-appropriate language and literacy
skills. Despite the fact that Marcy did not have a first
language or any literacy exposure until the age of 4,
she made significant progress. We believe that Marcy’s
dramatic literacy progress was due to two reasons: use
of grammatically accurate decontextualized English
and consistently high quality research-based reading
instruction. Detailed knowledge of her education
might assist those teaching hearing students as well as
deaf students, because all beginning readers in this
country face the same alphabetic written language and
the same complex English-language structures that
may hinder their development as readers if not addressed via instruction. We hope that our case study
documents the significant difference educators knowledgeable in research-based reading instruction made in
the literacy development of a child.
Our experience working with a variety of students
(urban poor, ESL, and learning and language disabled)
who do not read well is that all students who do not
read on grade level would benefit from the manner in
which Marcy’s language and reading abilities were regularly assessed and the type of instruction provided
and constantly adjusted. Although we feel the results
of the 9 years of progress we document are impressive,
we also feel that they are obtainable for all children. We
believe that teachers can make an important difference
in the acquisition of language and literacy for all stu-
dents, and we hope that the topic of the languageliteracy connection will be given more careful consideration by professionals in the field.
Received March 11, 2001; revisions received August 13, 2001;
accepted August 15, 2001
Appendix 1
A Description of Measures Used in This Study
Listening (Audition) Assessment
1. Audiometric Tests. Marcy’s hearing acuity was
tested while not using equipment (i.e., unaided), while
wearing binaural hearing aids, and while using a cochlear implant. Testing occurred at least annually during
the data collection period.
2. Developmental Approach to Successful Listening–II (Stout & Windle, 1992). The DASL test includes a placement test and a section of activities. This
test allows a variety of subskills to be assessed at the
Sound Awareness or detection level (e.g., the child indicates when sound is present or not); at the Phonetic
or discrimination level (e.g., can discriminate between
a whisper, quiet, and loud speech); the Identification
level (e.g., can identify Amy from Ashley); and Comprehension level (e.g., can follow a direction containing
three critical elements).
Speech Articulation Assessment
1. Ling Phonetic Level and the Ling Phonological
Level Speech Evaluation (Ling, 1976). These measures
were designed by Ling to informally assess the ability
of children who are deaf or hard of hearing to produce
phonemes and vowels (at the phonetic level) and
speech articulation during conversation (phonological
level). They are not standardized, but a percent correct
is figured by dividing the total number of skills demonstrated by the total number of items.
2. Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (Goldman & Fristoe, 1986). This test provides information
about an individual’s ability to articulate initial, medial,
and final phonemes sampled in both spontaneous and
imitative productions at the word and sentence level.
Hearing norms are provided for 35 common speech
sounds.
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
3. Speech Intelligibility. Judgments made by adults
who were unfamiliar with the speech of deaf children
were collected annually by the school speech-language
pathologist.
Receptive English Language Assessment
1. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R;
PPVT-III ) (Dunn & Dunn, 1981, 1997). The PPVT is
a receptive measure of English. The student is asked to
point to a single vocabulary item given four pictures.
The test is standardized on hearing children.
2. Assessing Semantic Skills Through Everyday
Themes (Barrett, Zachman, & Huisingh, 1988). The
ASSET requires the child to identify labels, categories,
attributes, functions, and definitions. It tests the same
skills expressively. The test is standardized on hearing
children.
3. Clinical Evaluation of (English) Language Fundamentals-Revised (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1989,
1995). Initially, the CELF-Revised (1989) was administered to the subject. In 1995, it was replaced by the
CELF-3, a newer version of the test. The titles of most
of the subtests remained the same, but the Oral Directions subtest was renamed Concepts and Directions on
the CELF-3. Not every subtest was administered to
the subject, nor were the same subtests given every
year. The test is standardized on hearing children.
Expressive English Language Assessment
1. Test of Language Development (TOLD-P,
TOLD-2) (Newcomer & Hammill, 1982, 1988). The
TOLD is highly similar to the CELF. The TOLD-P,
Primary, is designed for ages 4–8:11, and the TOLD2, Intermediate, for children ages 8:6–12:11. Subtests
include Sentence Structure and Word Structure. The
test is standardized on hearing children.
2. Language Processing Test (Richard & Hanner,
1990). The LPT assesses both expressive decontextualized skills through several subtests: Associations, Categorization, Similarities, Differences, and Attributes.
The test is normed on hearing children.
3. Assessing Semantic Skills Through Everyday
Themes (ASSET) (Barrett, Zachman, & Huisingh,
1988). This test is described above.
4. Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test
181
(Gardner, 1983). The EOWPVT is an expressive vocabulary test that requires the student to label pictures
that she is shown. Standard scores are not available.
The test is standardized on hearing children.
5. The Clinical Evaluation of (English) Language
Fundamentals-Revised (Semel, Wiig, Secord, 1989,
1995). The following CELF-3 expressive subtests were
used: Word Classes, Word Structure, Formulated Sentences, and Recalling Sentences.
6. Oral and Written Language Scale, Listening
Comprehension Scale (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1995). The
OWLS includes a variety of expressive and written
subtests. The OWLS skills are assessed in a manner
that is more cognitively challenging than the LPT or
CELF. The test is standardized on hearing children.
Reading Assessments
1. Informal Reading Related Measures. Three of
Clay’s (1993) Observation Survey tasks (i.e., Concepts
About Print, Dictation, and Letter Identification) and
a test of phonemic awareness (Taylor, 1989) were administered. These tests are not standardized.
2. Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). This measure assesses four basic areas: Reading, Mathematics, Written
Language, and Knowledge. The test is test is standardized on hearing children.
3. Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised
(Woodcock, 1998). The measure consists of six subtests: Visual-Auditory Learning, Letter Identification,
Word Identification, Word Attack, Word Comprehension, and Passage Comprehension. The test is normed
on hearing children.
4. Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (GM) (MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1989). This test consists of Vocabulary and Comprehension subtests presented in a
multiple-choice format. The Gates-MacGinitie test is
normed on hearing children.
5. Curriculum-Based Assessment (CBA). These
tests were developed by the Olathe (Kansas) School
District to measure reading comprehension using authentic narrative and expository passages. The student
reads one narrative and one expository passage and
writes answers to open-ended comprehension questions. This assessment was administered annually at
midyear and at the end of the year using different pas-
182
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7:2 Spring 2002
sages each time. Students are judged against their district peers’ performance.
6. Second Grade Retelling Project-Test Structure
Analysis (Luetke-Stahlman, Montgomery, and Griffiths, 1998, 1999). English meaning, form and text
structure elements were analyzed for 28 story retellings.
7. Quantitative Reading Inventory (Leslie and
Caldwell, 1990) is an informal reading inventory consisting of narrative and expository passages graduated
in difficulty from the primer to eighth grade level. Subjects read the passage and answer comprehension questions asked by the examiner.
Appendix 2
A Chronology of Marcy’s Developing Word
Recognition Strategies in Grade One
Evidence of a developing bank of sight words
10/6/95—This skill was evident early in Marcy’s ability to write familiar words. At the beginning of the year
she wrote 9 words (5 of them names of family members) in a given 5 minute time frame. When writing
sentences each day in reading lessons she wrote more
and more words with no help. When asked to write as
many words as you can in week 11 of lessons, Marcy began to write and sign words that were orthographically
similar (dad, mad, had, mad; rat, cat, sat).
Evidence of using the chunks in words to unlock unknown
words
The KALL intervention teacher used unique teaching
methods to get at the orthographic and morphological
structures and other chunks in words. For example,
Marcy knew hill so to get hilly the teacher added the
sign marker for the sound at the end of hilly (long e
sound). Then to get frilly the teacher made a visual association in order to connect hilly and frilly. In other
words, since Marcy knew the word hilly and the sign
for it, the teacher would substitute the handshape for
the h of hilly with the handshape for f in the air where
hilly was signed. In a sense she was making a visual
connection for what hearing teachers would make for
an auditory association when two things rhyme. In another example, Marcy knew grin so in order to get
Grindy the teacher signed grin plus the handshape d
plus the handshape y. Marcy started to use these strategies on her own when she signed the word hilarious (1/
10) by using the sign for hill plus the sign for air plus
the handshape for the letter e plus the sign for us.
Evidence of self-correcting
10/12/95—Marcy read doors as door then selfcorrected. On the same day she self-corrected glass for
glasses.
Evidence of reading for meaning (substitutions that made
sense)
Evidence of using some aspects of sound
11/21/95—Marcy read said for yelled.
11/15/95—Example of use of initial and medial sound
but not ending sound (win for with).
Novel strategy
11/21/95—Evidence of using initial consonant and
meaning (large for long).
12/22/95—Spontaneously said that hush, hat, and help
started the same.
10/29/95—Marcy made up a sign for crash and a sign
for flash. In other words, when she did not know a word
she used a place holder. Occasionally she would create such a place-holder sign and then state aloud,
“Whatever!”
1/11/95—Used the sign by for the word buy.
Evidence of developing metacognition
Evidence of segmenting and blending
Marcy was also able to sound out the word tent, evidence
that she was beginning to incorporate the direction
commonly used in lessons, Stretch it out. How many
sounds do you hear? What letter goes with the first sound?, etc.
From the beginning, the KALL intervention teacher
worked to get Marcy to use strategies and explain
which strategy she used as she unlocked unknown
words. For a while Marcy responded randomly with
the strategy terminology for example, she signed It
Assessment-Based Language and Reading Instruction
made sense when it did not make sense. At first, Marcy
focused almost exclusively on the print cues and her
mistakes would be close in terms of features of the
word (supper, summer; quiet, quite; became, because) but her
choices would not make sense in the sentence. The intervention teacher worked tirelessly to convince Marcy
to make sure her choices made sense. On December 7
Marcy said she looked at the picture and tried it out in
the sentence to see if it made sense, and it did. In the
second half of grade one Marcy made fewer errors that
did not make sense and when she did they were generally for longer words (everybody). If the teacher would
cover up part of the word and show her how she could
deal with one part at a time, Marcy was more successful. In February of first grade Marcy began to explain
how she figured things out that clearly demonstrated
she was using a variety of strategies. For example, she
could be specific about some aspect of a picture that
helped her make sense or a word part that supported
her efforts to figure out a word.
Data sources for Appendix 2: teacher’s lesson plan
notes and videotapes of lessons.
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Received March 11, 2001; revisions received August 13, 2001;
accepted August 15, 2001