BPS Teachers of the Deaf Supporting Students with Home Learning

Language is vital to all areas of learning and life. During home learning, BPS’s Teachers of the Deaf have carried on with their core purpose: planning, implementing and assessing teaching and learning to develop the oral language of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students; enabling them to achieve their full potential within an inclusive mainstream setting and equipping them with skills for the classroom and beyond. 

Digitising language intervention, which usually takes place within a 1:1 therapy model, has had its challenges. However, working together with families, we have made this changed learning environment work for our students using 1:1 video conferencing and online platforms (such as Seesaw & Google Classroom) to assign individualised learning tasks. 

Classroom teachers have played an integral role in the continuity of education for DHH students. BPS’s classroom teachers have continued to take an inclusive approach while working remotely, they understand the importance of language intervention and have worked with us to differentiate our students’ classroom tasks. As a result of this collaboration between Teachers of the Deaf, classroom teachers and parents, DHH students are continuing to work towards their curriculum and language targets.

In addition to our work with BPS’s DHH students, we are transferring our intervention experience to support students across all cohorts, setting them up for success with online learning tasks. This is a continuation of the support we provide when on site and is being achieved via small-group video conferences, the development of digital intervention resources for grade level teams and collaborative planning.

Thank you, parents and colleagues, for your continued support of our community’s DHH students. Continuing the learning of students with disabilities while working remotely during a crisis is a feat of which we can all be incredibly proud.