Illinois Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing- 54th Annual Conference “Recipe For Success" Session: Using literacy to promote social emotional abilities and pragmatic language development in young children with hearing loss.

Current research has shown that children with normal hearing acquire pragmatic language skills through incidental learning. Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) have less opportunities to learn through incidental means; therefore, require direct instruction. Through this presentation, we will review the need for direct pragmatic language/social-emotional instruction in young children with hearing loss and provide intervention strategies to target these skills in your practice. We will highlight the use of literacy as an intervention strategy to develop these social-emotional/pragmatic language skills as we help you create your own book in this make-and-take presentation.