Describes a residential school classroom for deaf third graders. A critical school skill, the ability to engage in literacy activities, grows from the ability to exploit American Sign Language-based (ASL) literacy practices, which are indigenous to the culture of signing deaf people and critical for literacy learning when ASL is the medium of…

This report discusses the outcomes of a project that examined the acquisition of reading and writing skills in 135 children with deafness or who are hard of hearing. Eighty-three of the children attended a state-sponsored residential school and 52 attended a local school district program where students with deafness or who are hard of hearing are…