ABSTRACT
In this chapter I describe three young literacy learners in a public elementary school program for hearing impaired children. As in most deaf education settings, literacy in English is the dominant instructional goal. In contrast to most deaf education settings, however, in this classroom, discourse was structured by American Sign Language (ASL). Indeed, ASL was the primary medium of instruction for all school subjects, including English, as well as for social life among the deaf children and their teachers. In this setting, the presence of one deaf adult who is a native signer of ASL generated a context where deaf children could both engage in learning and express themselves as learners through their incipient ASL/English bilingualism. Although they found the learning tasks focused on reading and writing English to be difficult, the children’s interest in language, writing, and other people, coupled with their ability to express their ideas through ASL, provides many insights into the nature of the literacy learning task for deaf children.
