This exciting 8-unit DVD series teaches family members important early visual literacy skills for young children who are deaf that will help prepare these children to learn to read. An important focus of the DVD series is on family members learning and using signs for “service words” that deaf children will encounter in their basal reading at school. Service words are those words whose meanings cannot be easily learned through the use of pictures or objects (e.g., apple) and include prepositions, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and articles (e.g., how do you show a deaf child the meaning of “of”?). Use of signs for service words in family-friendly communication is demonstrated both in American Sign Language and Manually Coded English.
Each DVD unit includes delightful presentations of the sign concepts, demonstrations of family activities in which the target service word signs are used, literacy tips, and self-paced assessments. Family members can use their DVD remote to interact with the units. The series has been field tested and shown to be very effective in teaching service words and visual literacy skills to families.
A 117-page manual accompanies the DVD Series. The manual builds on the “Literacy Tips” presented in each DVD unit but provides much more in depth information and many more activity ideas for the family. The DVD Series and Manual won the Telly Award.