Hearing Impaired

Hearing Impaired
Definition – Hearing impairment is a generic term indicating a hearing disability that may range in severity from mild to profound. Persons whose sense of hearing is nonfunctional for the ordinary purposes of life are considered deaf. This hearing loss adversely affects educational performance and is so severe that the student is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification. Residual hearing or “hard of hearing” describes individuals in whom the sense of hearing , though defective, is functional either with or with a hearing aid.
Characteristics:
Minimal Hearing Loss – have difficulty hearing spoken language at a distance or in the presence of background noise
Sensorineural hearing loss – hearing loss caused by disorders of the inner ear (cochlea).
Conductive hearing loss – caused by a blockage or barrier to the transmission of sound through the outer or middle ear.
Mixed hearing loss – combination of both conductive and sensorineural loss.
Central hearing disorder – resulting from disorder in the central auditory nervous system between the brain stem and the auditory cortex in the brain
Functional or non organic hearing loss – disorder where the person experiences a hearing loss, but no cause can be found.
Normal hearing – Students can detect all speech sounds even at a soft conversation level.
Minimal loss – Students may have difficulty hearing faint or distant speech. Peer conversation and teacher instructions presented too rapidly, particularly in noisy classrooms, are likely to result in missed information.
Mild – Students may miss up to 50% of class discussions especially if voices are soft or the environment is noisy. Students will require the use of a hearing aid or personal FM system
Moderate – Classroom conversation from 3 – 5 feet away can be understood if the structure and vocabulary is controlled. Hearing aids and/or personal FM systems are essential. Specific attention will need to be directed to language development, reading, and written language.
Moderate to severe – Without amplification students with this degree of loss can miss up to 100% of speech information. Full time use of amplification is essential. They will probably require additional help in all language based academic subjects.
Severe – Students can only hear loud noises at close distances. They require individual hearing aids, intensive auditory training and specialized instructional techniques in reading, language,and speech development.
Profound – For all practical purposes these students rely on vision rather than hearing for processing information. This student is a candidate for signing systems and specialized instructional techniques in reading, speech, and language development.
Accommodations
Students with hearing loss need to see the teacher's face all the time to speech read and to get meaning clues. Keep looking at the student.
Speak naturally. Do not over-enunciate or speak too loudly.
Look tochild's location in classroom.
Word wall with plenty of daily vocab words
Visual schedule
Visual instructions – charts with pictures, story boards
Hand's on activities
Buddy system so that student gets physical clues as to movement etc.
Learn sign language for basic classroom cues.
Allow time for child to rest from the hard work of “communicating”. Supply a private place for work and play.
Remove unnecessary noise from classroom