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Phonemic Awareness
Mary Gaither
EDUC 312: Research Article Analysis
10/02/14
Phonemic Awareness for Deaf Students

Teachers with children with different types of disabilities in their classroom have
to be aware of ways to adapt their teaching strategies so that they are able to use best
practice for all of their students. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing can develop
many struggles in learning especially in reading. A large part of learning how to read
properly is done by hearing how the alphabet sounds and how those letters turn to sounds,
and sounds to words. This can become extremely difficult if they are unable to clearly
hear those sounds, which is why it is important to see how phonemic awareness for deaf
students could work.
According to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of
2004, teachers are required to provide quality for all students. Although this is a
requirement, students with hearing loss have gotten pushed to the side and have not
received the proper education, especially in reading, that they deserve and have the right
to have (Messier 2014). These students to get the best teaching in reading that they can,
they need educators who have been trained to teach phonemic awareness in an unique
way that can benefit the student hard of hearing. In order for educators to be prepared to
educate students with different strategies, they have to be prepared and educated as well
by higher education.
The way that phonemic awareness is taught to deaf students will look different
from the traditional methods because of the audio delays. One way that the instruction
looks different is that it is focused on visual skills rather than audio. Some of the studies

Phonemic Awareness

done regarding deaf students and phonemic awareness show that students being taught
phonemic awareness by visual clues are just as proficient as those who learned by audio.
The study that was done was to examine the phonemic awareness knowledge of those
who teach students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The point of this study was to see the
connection between the sound of speech and the written text (Messier 2014). The study
consisted of many different ways to measure their skills and abilities to teach and apply
phonemic awareness including self-reflection, PPAM, a Professional Portfolio, and a
phoneme awareness test which is an adaption of the teacher knowledge survey (Messier
2014).
The results of this study showed that there were some gaps in the preparedness of
the educators and therefore the deaf students couldnt be receiving the best education
possible. I did notice that the study was only completed in the south and so the results
might not be applicable to all areas.
I found it interesting that students were able to learn phonics without having to be
able to relay on audio tools. Educators and the career of teachers as a whole has made
many improvements in our profession to be able to reach out to all students and be able to
succeed in following the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of
2004. The biggest take away from this article and study is that it is so important to teach
all children and teach them with the same level of quality education. In order for that to
happen, teachers will have to be offered professional development courses or go to higher
education to be able to be fully prepared and equipped to teach students with all levels of
hearing abilities and all disabilities that could appear in a classroom. Students with haring
disabilities deserve to learn to read just as well as all other students.

Phonemic Awareness
Works Cited
MESSIER, J., & JACKSON, C. (2014). A COMPARISON OF PHONEMIC AND
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN EDUCATORS WORKING WITH
CHILDREN WHO ARE D/DEAF OR HARD OF HEARING. American Annals
Of The Deaf, 158(5), 522-538.