Thanks to your phone calls and letters, HB 1367, a crucial piece of legislation that will bring ALL OPTIONS to children with hearing loss in Indiana, PASSED the House of Representatives today. Now, it heads to the Senate for another vote. Help us keep up the momentum to bring ALL OPTIONS and ACCOUNTABILITY to children with hearing loss in Indiana by contacting senators today!
I am writing to encourage your SUPPORT for HB 1367.
{INSERT YOUR PERSONAL STORY. PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR EXPERIENCES WITH ISD/OUTREACH, IF APPLICABLE. OUR REPRESENTATIVES NEED TO KNOW WHY ISD/OUTREACH IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR ALL FAMILIES. IF NOT FROM INDIANA, INCLUDE YOUR HEARING LOSS STORY ABOUT HOW ALL OPTIONS AND ACCOUNTABILITY HELPED YOU}
IMPORTANT FACTS:
95% of deaf and hard of hearing babies are born to HEARING parents.
80-90% of parents choose a Listening and Spoken Language as their communication option.
Newborn babies can wear hearing aids, and profoundly deaf babies can get a cochlear implant at age one.
99% of all profoundly deaf children are candidates for a cochlear implant, a device which allows them to listen, speak, and thrive in the hearing community
Indiana’s status quo concerning deaf and hard of hearing education is NOT working effectively for 80% of all Hoosier families. Of course, 100% of parents deserve to receive unbiased, comprehensive information about communication options, so they can make an informed decision about what is best for their family. HB 1367 will help ALL children who are deaf or hard of hearing, not just some of them. ALL parents deserve to have their communication choice(s) respected. Likewise, a family’s use (or non-use) of hearing technology should be respected and supported through appropriate services. Under the current system, Hoosier parents do NOT have equal access to all communication options or information about hearing technology. Outreach services for the entire state should not be associated with one school and ONE philosophy.
HB 1367 is NOT adding an agency, but rather, it is moving one. Unlike ISD/Outreach, which promotes ASL as the language and thinking, the new Center would be unbiased toward any particular mode of communication. It would serve ALL deaf and hard of hearing families regardless of the communication methods chosen.
HB 1367 includes tracking and monitoring of children who are deaf and hard of hearing as they are identified and enrolled in appropriate services. These activities will prevent children from falling through the cracks. As a result, the State of Indiana will spend less money in intervention down the road.
HB 1367 offers the opportunity to align our state with the best practices in early intervention for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. I will be very disappointed if we do not take advantage of this opportunity to make our Indiana system work for all children who need it.
Every 48 hours a baby in Indiana is born with a hearing loss. We can’t wait. We must make this change NOW!
For our children’s future, please SUPPORT HB 1367.
Sincerely,
If you contact Senators, please let us know, and we’ll enter you in a drawing for FREE CI Awareness gear (tshirts, mugs, totebags, etc.). Click HERE to enter.
What is HB 1367? Watch this video or click HERE for more info from Hear Indiana.
On Friday, HB 1367 passed its first hurdle toward becoming a law and giving children with hearing loss in Indiana ALL OPTIONS by passing in the House Education Committee’s vote. This is a great success, and we are grateful to the legislators who are helping to bring accountability and excellent outcomes to children with hearing loss in their state. The battle is not over, though, and we still need your help, so ACT NOW to SUPPORT HB 1367!
Next, HB 1367 will go to the House of Representatives to be voted on by all of the legislators. The vote will be this Monday – 1/30/2012. We need your help to EMAIL or CALL legislators TODAY telling them to SUPPORT HB 1367.
Here are quick and easy ways to help SUPPORT HB 1367:
Status quo is not acceptable. Share YOUR experiences (especially if you are in IN and have experience with ISD Outreach, or if you have experience NOT receiving access to all options and how this harmed your child and your family)
This bill will help ALL the children who are deaf or hard of hearing, not just some of them.
We are NOT adding an agency. We are moving one, and making it independent and unbiased. Outreach services for the entire state should not be associated with one school and ONE philosophy.
We are making Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education more accountable.
We will spend less per pupil while achieving better outcomes.
Every 48 hours a baby in Indiana is born with a hearing loss. Our children need your help NOW!!!
Here is a video explaining HB 1367. Share it on twitter, share it on facebook, share it with legislators. Do everything you can to spread the word. Our children deserve success — if we do not speak for them, who will?
Remember, if you contact legislators to help SUPPORT HB 1367, we’d like to enter you to win FREE CI Awareness gear. Click HERE for details on how to enter.
Many readers of Cochlear Implant Online have attended, led, or participated in more Auditory-Verbal Therapy sessions than they can count. For those of you who haven’t, here is a rough sketch of what an AV session might look like. There are many ways to provide high quality services in keeping with the Principles of Auditory Verbal Therapy, and this is just one example of a sixty-minute session (times are approximate and, obviously, will vary from session to session – they are more for organization than exact measures).
:00-:05 Check in with caregiver(s) and child. How was the past week? Did the child do, say, or hear anything new or particularly notable? I also use this time to remind the parent of what the goals were for the past week and to see how home practice went (“Last week, we talked about using the noun modifiers “dirty” and “clean.” How did Susie do with that at home this week?”). This is very important to me, because it reinforces the idea that PARENTS are their children’s primary teachers, and that I will be holding them accountable for working with their child at home. Sure, a parent could just lie and say, “Oh, yeah, it went perfectly,” but a) that’s easy to see through, b) we all know how awful it feels to be put on the spot and be found wanting and have to lie – hopefully that feeling will motivate the parent not to have it happen again and c) the child’s performance in therapy will reflect whether or not skills have been practiced at home during the week. I encourage parents to use their child’s Experience Book to record their observations of their child’s behavior, things the child said, or other milestones during the week to help them remember talking points for therapy.
:05-:10 Equipment and Ling Six Sound Check. This time is used for troubleshooting the child’s HA(s), CI(s), or Baha, to ensure that they have optimal access to sound. A Ling Six Sound Check provides behavioral verification of equipment function. As the child masters the Ling Six Sound Check presented from a close distance and without background noise, distance is increased and background noise (white noise, music, multitalker babble – YouTube is a great source for this from “sound effects” – type videos) to more closely replicate the listening environment of the real world. This is a great time for the therapist to help the parents connect the child’s performance on auditory tasks to his speech and language skills as well as any audiological needs (e.g. if the child is not demonstrating detection of /s/, is it time for a new CI MAP or for a child who is a hearing aid user to consider CI candidacy?).
:10-:50 Let’s play! The majority of the session is spent having fun and working on therapy objectives. The activities and goals vary from child to child, but each session should target goals in the domains of:
Audition: working through Erber’s Hierarchy of auditory skill development, auditory memory, etc. Again, these tasks begin in close, quiet environments, and later are moved to greater distances and greater background noise as the child’s listening skills develop.
Speech: working on the production and articulation of developmentally-appropriate phonemes (speech sounds) and syllable shapes through LISTENING first (no, “Look at my lips,” here, thank you very much!).
Language: working on increasing vocabulary, as well as the linguistic structures (syntax) that the child can understand (receptive language) and use (expressive language).
Communication: working on pragmatic and social language – asking questions, understanding slang and figures of speech, self-advocacy skills, etc.
Cognition: paying attention to the development of the whole child and cognitive/academic skills that are developmentally-appropriate for him.
Some therapists like to plan a separate activity for each of these domains. This usually does not work well for me, as I prefer to plan longer activities that incorporate goals from a variety of areas. It varies between professionals. For me, the “activities” section of the session ALWAYS includes shared reading of a book, and usually includes some sort of craft or take-home activity to reinforce goals throughout the week. There are many different ways to structure this part of the session, but a few things should be consistent between any professionals using an Auditory-Verbal Therapy model:
The goals of each activity should be introduced and explained to the caregiver before the activity begins
The therapist should model the activity for the parent, and then quickly turn the activity over for the caregiver to lead in working with his/her child
Caregivers should be active participants in the session and given opportunities to practice new skills and ask questions
All skills are taught with an emphasis on listening – audition first!
:50-:60 Wrap-up. The therapist discusses with the caregiver (and child, if they’re old enough), the goals and objectives that were targeted during the session, and how the child did. The therapist works with the parent and child to create a new page in the child’s Experience Bookabout what happened during the session, and records goals and activities for the parent and child to work on at home during the time between sessions. Parents (and children) are given time to ask any questions, and the session wraps up.
I love making crafts with children in therapy. It provides a great way to engage children in a variety of pre-academic and fine motor skills while working on objectives in language, listening, and speech. Making something beautiful in therapy gives children a “talking point” to show off to friends and family members throughout the week, encouraging carryover of target structures and social language skills. But as much as I love crafts, there are few things in the world that bother me more than when they’re… NAKED.
What do I mean? Naked crafts are works of art that are so beautiful, so carefully cut, so well thought-out, and completely, utterly, devoid of text and language. I don’t care if that’s the best coffee filter butterfly you’ve ever seen in your life. If it doesn’t come attached to a notecard explainging the speech, language, and listening goals that go along with it, you might as well chalk up the fifteen minutes you spent making it to wasted time. While the child’s parent or caregiver, who was in the session with you, might remember the goals that go along with it for a day or two after therapy (though that’s no guarantee, either), how is big brother at home supposed to know? Or the babysitter? Or his classroom teacher?
Don't leave me hanging! Label those naked crafts.
Here are some suggestions to clothe your crafts with language, and to get more bang for your buck when making things in therapy:
The making of the craft itself should be as clinician-planned yet child-controlled as possible. What do I mean by that? The clinician should “stage” the craft to create maximal opportunities for communication — and teach parents and caregivers to do the same. The glue you need is out of reach? Guess you’ll have to ask for that! The beads are too hard for you to do yourself? It’s self-advocacy time! Don’t know what this piece is called? Well, how do we find out the name for things we don’t know? That’s clinician-planned. And child-controlled? That just means that perfection is NOT our aim here. I like crafts to be as messy and disorganized as the child wishes. Teaching a child that there is a “just right” way to do art goes against the spirit of creativity and takes the joy out of experiential learning.
When I make a book with a family, I write GOALS: on the inside front cover with bullet points of what to remember to highlight when reading the book at home. For more on bookmaking in therapy, see HERE.
Attach a 3″x5″ index card to the back of crafts describing what it is (if not clearly identifiable), and a few sentences about how the child made it, or questions that an observer could ask.
The simplest way to “clothe” a craft is just to label it “Child’s X” (for example, “Jonah’s Snowman”). While it’s not the most detailed explanation, in a pinch, you’ve worked on the child’s name, possessive -’s, and a noun label — not bad for two words!
When a child produces an original work of art, say, “Tell me about it,” and write their narration on the paper, too. For example, if a three-year-old makes what looks to me like a scribble, I could say, in a very nonjudgmental way, “Tell me about it,” and then transcribe his narration, “It’s a tornado. The red paint is going ’round and ’round.” It is important not to interfere with the artist’s interpretation of his work, though I do make changes to what the child’s “raw” narration is to make it grammatically correct as needed.
Have the child rehearse “talking points” on his masterpiece before leaving therapy. Ask, “What did you make?” and help him formulate a socially-appropriate response at whatever his present language level (e.g. for a very young child, the answer to “What did you make?” might just be, “Dog,” while an older child would be expected to say, “I made a brown puppy with felt and glue.”)
If you give a therapist a book… she’s going to want to make one more. Here are some ideas for creating books in therapy to help develop children’s language and pre-literacy skills, as well as to encourage home carry-over of therapy objectives.
Part of every auditory-verbal therapy session for me includes sharing a book with parents and children as a way of promoting literacy and listening and spoken language development. Once the shared reading is complete, there is no better way to continue to learning objectives than to create a book that the family can take home.
WHY is this important?
For many families, the books you create in therapy may be among the few, if any, reading materials they have in their home.
Bookmaking helps parents with low literacy levels have a positive book-sharking experience with their child. If the book and text are made in therapy, at a level that works for the parent and the child, it is more likely to be re-read at home.
If you are working with families who speak a language other than English at home, you might not have the original book in their home language (e.g. does your clinic have Green Eggs and Ham in Urdu?), but, with the help of adult family members and/or an interpreter, you can make a take-home book version in the language that works best for the family.
Books that tie into therapy activities show parents the importance of home practice and set the expectation that goals introduced in the week’s therapy session will be the subject of daily practice at home.
Making a child’s own version of the book you just read is highly motivating, and it takes the experience of shared reading to a more active, hands-on level. You may listen when a book is being read to you, but when you’re making your own book, you’re moving, cutting, gluing, requesting, coloring, and experiencing the book on many different levels.
Bookmaking encourages crucial pre-literacy skills, like understanding reading vocabulary (cover, author, title, page, word, sentence, illustration) and encourages families to read, read, read! For children with hearing loss, who we know are at great risk of poor literacy skills without proper intervention, this cannot be said enough.
Reading a book and then making your own promotes carryover through repetition.
Reading a book and then making your own promotes sustained attention to the same/similar task, an executive function skill that is essential for success in school.
Reading a book and then making your own provides increased exposure to new vocabulary and language structures, increasing the chance that a child will “pick up” on new concepts without having to be explicitly taught.
HOW do you do it?
Pick a book to read in therapy that is developmentally-appropriate for the child and conducive to practicing whatever therapy goal(s) you have in mind.
Make your blank book. You can use printer paper, construction paper, notecards, or anything else you have lying around to recycle. HERE are instructions on how to make a pop-book, a great “magic trick” sure to amaze children (and adults) of all ages. You can also insert your pages into sandwich-sized baggies with the seal on the left, then connect all of the seals with staples to create a “laminated” book to protect pages from little hands. HERE is another website with many child-friendly bookmaking ideas.
Googling “book title” + printables often yields sites that have coloring pages and flannel board printable templates that can be printed and cut out to create the “illustrations” for your book.
Add the child’s picture into the story — increase the personalization and motivation factors for your book.
Make it interesting! Add texture (cotton balls, sandpaper, felt scraps,feathers, etc.), lift-the-flaps, use scissors to take a “bite” out of a page that talks about eating, add pictures from newspapers and magazines, or whatever else you can think of to make the book high-interest as well as high-language!
Use printed illustrations from the book to work on sequencing and auditory memory.
Write the text together, even with very young children, to work on a variety of pre-literacy skills (left to right orientation, grapheme-phoneme connections, basic book handling skills, etc.). This can also help parents who do not read well get a mastery of the text instead of sending them home with something they have no idea how to read. It can also help families who speak a language other than English in the home include words or phrases from their own language in the book.
Use the “inside cover” of your book to write bullet points of goals (with examples) for home carryover.
Underline target structures in the text to remind parents of goals for home practice.
Cochlear Implant Online is not endorsed by Cochlear, Med-El, Advanced Bionics, and AGBell. Articles and comments do not necessarily represent the views of all three companies and AGBell. This website is created by Rachel Chaikof, who is a Cochlear Nucleus bilateral cochlear implant recipient, to create an awareness about cochlear implants and listening and spoken language.
Keep up the momentum! HB 1367 heads to the Senate!
I am writing to encourage your SUPPORT for HB 1367.
