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The present study examined the efficacy of using an informal reading inventory to assess literacy levels in elementary-age deaf students, grades 3-5: the period when the gap between deaf and hearing learners often begins to widen, and the need to identify and remediate specific skill deficits becomes increasingly imperative. Emphasis was placed on exploring how results of a formative assessment can inform instruction across a variety of literacy skills (e.g., word identification, reading accuracy, reading fluency, reading comprehension, writing) and among a broad range of learners. A case study approach is used to present in-depth overviews of the performance profiles of three students; also, instructional implications of the findings are discussed. The results illustrate how an informal reading inventory can be used to design interventions that are differentiated and targeted based on identified needs in both the code- and language-related domains of literacy skill development.
Keywords: deaf, literacy, assessment, reading, writing
Despite shifts in communication philosophies and instructional approaches, deaf1 learners continue to lag behind their hearing-age peers in reading achievement, with 50% of deaf learners reportedly graduating from high school with abilities below the fourth-grade level (Allen, 1986; King & Quigley, 1985; Pintner & Patterson, 1916; Qi & Mitchell, 2012; Traxler, 2000). Long-standing and ongoing debates in the field of deaf education have centered on the skills and processes employed in learning to read (Allen et al., 2009; Mayer & Trezek, 2014; Paul, Wang, Trezek, & Luckner, 2009; Wang, Trezek, Luckner, & Paul, 2008). More recently, discussions have focused on determining whether theories and models of literacy development that include an emphasis on skills from both the code-related domain (e.g., print principles, phonological abilities, the alphabetic principle) and the languagerelated domain (i.e., knowledge and use of the structures of English) (Adams, 1990, 1994, 2002; McGuinness, 2004, 2005; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) apply to deaf learners.
Consistent with an interactive model of literacy development and instruction, code- and language-related skills are not seen as mutually exclusive;
rather, they are viewed as acting in concert to foster reading comprehension (Adams, 1990; Chali, 1996; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; National Reading Panel, 2000). According to this theoretical framework, learning to read is a hierarchical, developmental process, and...