Here are some questions about teaching reading (and language):

What exactly is "reading?"  

What exactly is "reading?"
Reading is the process of deriving meaning from print. Reading requires the following characteristics of the reader:

Development and maintenance of a motivation to read
Development of appropriate active strategies to construct meaning from print
Sufficient background knowledge and vocabulary to foster reading comprehension
The ability to read fluently
The ability to decode unfamiliar words
The skills and knowledge to understand how phonemes or speech sounds are connected to print.
(from International Reading Association's Position Paper)

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What are various approaches to teaching reading to deaf students?

This may seem obvious but teachers need to provide their students with THINGS to read. One of the most important sources of information for Kenyans is the newspaper. Even nursery and infant classes will enjoy looking at the pictures. Teachers can encourage discussion of the pictures and try to predict what the text is about.

Teachers can also engage their students in creating and publishing classroom books. All you need are ideas for stories, paper, pencils (and coloured pencils or crayons for aesthetic purposes), magazine pictures, and tape (to bind the book and/or laminate for durability). Hardback exercise books also make great homemade classroom books.

Read aloud using KSL to your students. This means signing the stories from books in KSL. Remember that it is more important to make the story interesting to the students than to make it a perfect translation from English to KSL.

Basal Readers provide students with simple language and you are usually able to have several copies of the same book. If you have an entire series, the books build on each other and become progressively more challenging. The negative thing about basal readers is they are usually stilted and boring. However, the simple language helps some students feel successful and that is the ultimate goal.

Language Experience/Writing involves allowing the students to experience an event and then writing about it. Then, the students are able to read their own writing and the writing of their peers. In this way, they are learning about reading "from the inside out."

Read real books (literature). This is the ultimate goal of reading-to have students reading real books for real reasons. Again, if your school does not have books, there are several ways to get them. Try to get books that are multicultural and that contain themes Kenyan children will understand.

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What are some actual strategies to use in teaching reading?

There are several strategies for encouraging the development of reading in deaf students. The International Reading Association says:-

"There is no single method or single combination of methods that can successfully teach all children to read. Therefore, teachers must have a strong knowledge of multiple methods for teaching reading and a strong knowledge of the children in their care so they can create the appropriate balance of methods needed for the children they teach."

Shared Reading happens when the teacher shares a story with the class or small group of students. Time is taken to refer to the text, often pointing out pictures and words. Grammar can be discussed as well. Students are asked to predict what they think will happen next. Students can also discuss the feelings of the characters in various situations. A great culminating activity to shared reading is to re-write the story with your own version. Drama can also be incorporated into a final activity.

Guided Reading occurs when the teacher leads a group through a text that is a little above the students' reading level. The teacher can guide the students by asking questions and modeling various reading strategies (such as sounding out words for hard of hearing students, breaking the word into parts to guess, using context cues). Teachers can show the connections between KSL and the written text. This is the opportunity to show that some words use many signs to express the same meaning and some individual signs can express many written words.

In Independent Reading, students self-select from a variety of texts. They can demonstrate understanding of their reading by facilitating a discussion group about the story, answering questions from the teacher, creating dioramas, writing book reports or articles to be posted in the classroom or read at a school assembly. The books must be at the appropriate level that the student can comprehend the information independently.

Peer Reading involves older students reading to younger students or both reading to each other.

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How do I manage three different languages in the classroom?

This is a difficult question and we feel the answer will be changing very soon. Research shows that people need to acquire a first language to be able to learn a second and third language. For deaf students, the only language that is acquirable is KSL and this is true only if KSL is constantly and consistently in the environment.

Currently, when a student enters school (most often with no language), they are bombarded in class with at least three languages at the same time: KSL (if the teacher signs or from other students in a deaf school), English, and Swahili. It is also possible that a local language or "mother tongue" may be used to some extent, though this does not follow ministry guidelines.

In Kenya, students are examined in English and Swahili. However, KIE is working to eliminate the Swahili exam for Deaf students and include some type of assessment for KSL.

In classrooms, teachers should sign KSL and expose students to written English. Some also teach Swahili, but do not integrate that language into other subjects as they do for English. In a perfect world, everything that happens in the classroom would be signed in KSL and written in English and Swahili. Most teachers find this difficult and unrealistic, so they focus on training the students in English. 

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