Our Primary program for children who are deaf and hard of hearing is offered from Kindergarten to grade 3. This program is delivered five days a week (Monday-Friday) from September to the end of June. Lead by an experienced Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and an experienced Early Childhood Educator who help support your child’s physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and academic development.
What Does the Program Look Like?
For the children, it is a typical primary class environment. Depending on enrollment, grade cohorts are combined into a single class, with academic content tailored to your child’s specific grade and in accordance with the BC Ministry of Education. In this environment your child will engage in a wide range of activities suitable to their grade and have the added benefit of continued listening and spoken language development to better prepare them for entrance into mainstream schooling.
Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs) meetings are conducted three times a year for all children in our primary programs. IEPs identify comprehensive goals in the area of audition (hearing), receptive and expressive language, speech, cognition, and social pragmatics. IEPs are used to evaluate your child’s progress and are completed by the child’s teacher and in consultation with other staff such as audiologist, early childhood educator, occupational therapist (from off-site) and speech-language pathologist.
In addition, regularly guided observation sessions and group meetings are conducted throughout the year with parents, which gives you a unique opportunity to observe how your child learns and interacts in the classroom. This allows you to be more informed and engaged in your child’s development.
Lastly, children in this program have regular access to an audiologist and a speech-language pathologist to monitor their audiological and language development. All staff members consistently work together to ensure optimal language, social and academic development!
Program Objectives:
The goal of our Primary program is to ensure the student’s readiness to enter mainstream classrooms where they will:
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Demonstrate responsibility in the use and care of hearing assistive technology
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Practice self-advocacy skills to repair communication breakdown
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Engage in social conversations with peers and adults
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Explain their hearing losses and access needs to peers and adults
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Feel confident in the skills acquired to socialize appropriately
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