Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
From "58-IN-MIND: Multilingual Teaching Strategies for Diverse Deaf Students."
Edited by Debbie Golos, Marlon Kuntze, Kimberly Wolbers, and Chris Kurz.
Find out more at https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/58-IN-MIND
Published by Gallaudet University Press.
****This video may not be repurposed or incorporated into other works in any way without the express written consent of the signer and the chapter authors.****
This video is signed by chapter co-author Hannah Dostal.
Hannah has long black hair and is wearing glasses and bracelets. She is wearing a black shirt in front of a black background.
Transcript:
Shannon Graham is currently the Director of Instruction and Special Education at the Washington School for the Deaf. She is a former curriculum and assessment coordinator and taught middle and high school science. She has a background in biology and has conducted scientific research.
Hannah Dostal is a researcher at the University of Connecticut. She is a former writing intervention coordinator for deaf students in grades K-12, and she used to teach middle school English/Language Arts. She is interested in writing instruction and how to engage students in meaningful and substantive writing tasks.
The authors believe that the interplay between writing, language, and content is essential for students to explore.
Why The Chapter is Important:
As teachers and teacher educators, we know that incidental learning is crucial for all children's development. We’ve found that using a few disciplinary literacy writing-related strategies can help to maximize the learning environment and instructional time, encourage content learning, and teach subject-specific discourse through writing. Additionally, using ASL as the language of instruction while considering additional home languages can allow students to use the known to learn the new, and therefore discuss and participate more readily using ASL and written English.
Core Recommendations
In our chapter, we provide an overview of disciplinary writing instruction with multilingual Deaf students. Authentic writing opportunities parallel the work of professionals in fields and subfields of mathematics, science, history, and Deaf studies. In a Deaf multilingual teaching environment, we encourage the use of ASL to teach new concepts and engage students in disciplinary discourse, and written English to bridge learned concepts with literacy skills. The three core recommendations presented in this chapter, viewed through a DLI lens, broaden Deaf students' knowledge of content and build writing skills in multiple languages simultaneously:
1. Write to learn.
2. Write with a purpose in a content area.
3. Model disciplinary discourse and thought processes in ASL.
From "58-IN-MIND: Multilingual Teaching Strategies for Diverse Deaf Students."
Edited by Debbie Golos, Marlon Kuntze, Kimberly Wolbers, and Chris Kurz.
Find out more at https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/58-IN-MIND
Published by Gallaudet University Press.
****This video may not be repurposed or incorporated into other works in any way without the express written consent of the signer and the chapter authors.****
This video is signed by chapter co-author Hannah Dostal.
Hannah has long black hair and is wearing glasses and bracelets. She is wearing a black shirt in front of a black background.
Transcript:
Shannon Graham is currently the Director of Instruction and Special Education at the Washington School for the Deaf. She is a former curriculum and assessment coordinator and taught middle and high school science. She has a background in biology and has conducted scientific research.
Hannah Dostal is a researcher at the University of Connecticut. She is a former writing intervention coordinator for deaf students in grades K-12, and she used to teach middle school English/Language Arts. She is interested in writing instruction and how to engage students in meaningful and substantive writing tasks.
The authors believe that the interplay between writing, language, and content is essential for students to explore.
Why The Chapter is Important:
As teachers and teacher educators, we know that incidental learning is crucial for all children's development. We’ve found that using a few disciplinary literacy writing-related strategies can help to maximize the learning environment and instructional time, encourage content learning, and teach subject-specific discourse through writing. Additionally, using ASL as the language of instruction while considering additional home languages can allow students to use the known to learn the new, and therefore discuss and participate more readily using ASL and written English.
Core Recommendations
In our chapter, we provide an overview of disciplinary writing instruction with multilingual Deaf students. Authentic writing opportunities parallel the work of professionals in fields and subfields of mathematics, science, history, and Deaf studies. In a Deaf multilingual teaching environment, we encourage the use of ASL to teach new concepts and engage students in disciplinary discourse, and written English to bridge learned concepts with literacy skills. The three core recommendations presented in this chapter, viewed through a DLI lens, broaden Deaf students' knowledge of content and build writing skills in multiple languages simultaneously:
1. Write to learn.
2. Write with a purpose in a content area.
3. Model disciplinary discourse and thought processes in ASL.
