2026 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 15-17, 2026 • Jacksonville, FL
3/16/2026 | 10:05 AM - 10:35 AM | Literacy: Starting with the ABCs | City Terrace 10
Literacy: Starting with the ABCs
Beginning readers need to know letter shapes, names, and sounds. We can teach letter names and phonics skills to our d/Deaf/HH students visually. This presentation will cover strategies to teach letter names and sounds to our d/Deaf/HH students. The system introduced provides visual access to the phonemes (“sounds”) needed to develop these skills. We can provide for a stable phonological code for hard of hearing students who use spoken English and introduce the building blocks of spoken English to Deaf signing students using a visual-manual system to learn, manipulate, code, and encode the language they will learn to read.
- Participants will be able to identify skills beginning readers need to know.
- Participants will be able to list the two best predictors of early reading success.
- Participants will be able to explain how foundational literacy skills can be taught visually.
Presentation:
View Presentation File
Handouts:
Handout is not Available
Transcripts:
CART transcripts are NOT YET available, but will be posted shortly after the conference
Presenters/Authors
Nicole Dobson
(Primary Presenter), ACCESS Services, access.dobson@gmail.com;
Nicole Dobson, M.S., CCC-SLP, BCS-CL, is a speech-language pathologist, board certified specialist in child language, certified teacher of the deaf and special education consultant. She provides direct services, comprehensive assessments, and consultation services to support families, students, and school teams using spoken English, Cued American English, and ASL in early intervention and pre-k-12 settings. She has experience providing educational cued language transliteration services and works with cued language transliterators and ASL interpreters to ensure students’ access to language, communication, and education. She also provides training related to language, literacy, and deaf education, and created literacy materials to teach d/Deaf/HH/DB students literacy skills based on the science of reading. As a nationally certified Cued Speech/cued language instructor, she provides workshops to teach the system using curriculum and materials she developed. Nicole is the founder and director of Camp Discover, a program for families with d/Deaf/HH/DB children to learn and grow their language and communication skills using listening & spoken language, cued language, and/or signed language in a fun and supportive environment.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exists.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.
AAA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exists.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.