“COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY” at Northwest School for Hearing-Impaired Children. Throughout the day, in every lesson and interaction, we celebrate the use of language to share ideas, achieve goals, explore the world and socially engage with others. To facilitate early speech, language and auditory development, we support spoken communication with simultaneous Signing Exact English, where the speaker signs every word of the spoken message, including the grammatical structure of what is said. This helps children more rapidly make sense of the auditory input provided by their cochlear implants or hearing aids by creating a visual bridge from sound to meaning and social communication. Our students develop core language proficiency which is fundamental to academic achievement and future success in their home schools.
In addition, our unique instructional methods use the techniques below to encourage complete, original English sentences from students.
- All communication from the teacher to the child is signed and spoken concurrently in complete English.
- Children are assisted in communicating using complete English, with concurrent speech and sign. We have developed a technique called the “Again Technique” to aid children in practicing their communication skills. We also use the “Again Technique” to develop the speech potential of children.
- We have developed a sequenced curriculum of practical sentence patterns which deaf and hard of hearing children do not usually learn.
- We provide a comprehensive academic program, as detailed in our book, “Teaching the Hearing-Impaired Through Total Communication”.
