The Deaf-Blind Model Classroom Project

The Model Classrooms Supporting Students Deaf-Blindness & Other Low Incidence Disabilities

Through a contract with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina Deafblind Project, the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies is working with selected school sites and individual students to identify and implement exemplary practices in literacy and communication for students who have been identified with deaf-blindness. Model sites are located in 4 different counties in the state. The students in the project have made remarkable changes. Some of their stories and accomplishments are being shared to show the student changes that can occur over time when given access to meaningful literacy & communication activities.

Mission Statement

Prominent legislation has mandated access to the general education curriculum (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004) as well as appropriate instructional practices (No Child Left Behind, 2001) for all students, including those with significant disabilities.  Thus, the model classroom literacy instruction is being developed with reference to scientifically supported, general education literacy practices. Studies of students with significant disabilities have shown that this population can make progress with conventional reading and writing when given access to the same types of literacy instruction that typical students receive (Blischak, 1995; Erickson et al, 2005; Erickson & Koppenhaver, 2003; Erickson, Koppenhaver, Yoder, & Nance, 1997; Gipe, Duffy & Richards, 1993). It is important to note that the current instructional practices in the model classrooms signal a marked departure from traditional, special education literacy instruction historically done through mastery based, repeated trial methods.

It is well documented that students who have inadequate emergent literacy experiences will have difficulties with continued literacy learning or later conventional literacy learning (Koppenhaver, Coleman, Kalman & Yoder, 1991).  Thus, our aim has been to alleviate future literacy learning problems by focusing efforts on building a solid emergent literacy base for the students in the model classrooms. In the process, we have supported students’ beginning efforts in writing, communication, and interaction with books.  As the students have begun to read and write in conventional ways, the classrooms have begun to implement systematic conventional literacy instruction grounded in a scientific research base (National Reading Panel, 2000).