PROMOTING ALPHABETIC SKILLS OF YOUNG CHILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS IN CO-ENROLLMENT VERSUS INDIVIDUAL INCLUSION

The study assessed the efficacy of an early literacy intervention for 79 children ages 5-6 years withprelingual hearing loss (HL) who all functioned auditorily, using appropriate devices. Teachers andspeech therapists administered an 8-month-long intervention in preschools through two alphabetic sessionsand one storybook-reading session per week. Alphabetic sessions involved games and activities thatencouraged letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and functional writing. Storybook-reading sessionsutilized children’s books to discuss central concepts and ideas via games and creative activities. Thestudy compared two educational inclusion tracks: individual inclusion (a single student with HL fullyintegrated into a regular classroom) and co-enrollment (a group of students with HL partially integratedinto a regular classroom and co-taught by a regular teacher and a special education teacher). Anothergroup of children with HL studying in a co-enrollment track served as a control group. Children’s alphabeticskills (letter naming, orthographic awareness, phonological awareness, and word writing) wereassessed at pretest and posttest. Results showed that participants progressed more in the interventiongroups than in the control group on phonological awareness and word writing, regardless of inclusiontrack. Interestingly, the two intervention groups did not differ in their progress.