Many Deaf people are unfamiliar with their disability rights and the purpose of this thesis is to teach Deaf students about their disability rights. This curriculum consists of three units and eight lessons. The first unit introduces students to the history of disability rights. The second unit teaches students about key disability rights affecting Deaf people. The third unit orients students on finding key disability rights information and resources.

This curriculum has three overarching goals.

1. Understand historical timelines for disability rights related to Deaf people and make connections between historical struggles for equality as it relates to everyday experiences of Deaf youth and their current rights of today

2. Demonstrate a deep appreciation for the equality that has been achieved and for their disability rights

3. Empower Deaf youth with knowledge of their disability legal rights and utilize information and resources that will support efforts to seek redress for infringement.

Based on the evidence from student presentations, timelines, journals, worksheets, skits and summative assessments, all three curriculum goals were met.

Technology use in education is a necessary feature in language and literacy learning for students. Student are engaged with technology on a day to day basis and teachers have integrated technology within their classroom to enhance learning opportunities. For deaf and hard of hearing students, the visual component of technology has provided accessible resources for visual learning that has greatly impacted these students’ education in ways that have never been done before. This thesis puts forth a curriculum that implements a specific kind of technology known as GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format) alongside a bilingual approach to education. GIFs are digital images that are animated and play on a loop. These GIFs are able to capture ASL in a whole form, rather than an image, and also show actions clearly for the visual learner.

An evaluation plan was carried out to collect data from teacher observations, student work, presentations, and student recorded media. These monitored student performance during the curriculum. The curriculum was evaluated to show that GIFs and media supported deaf students to develop vocabulary, make connections between English and ASL, use technology as a resource, and increase their engagement. The value and uses of GIFs in the classroom are still left wide open to be expanded upon by future educators and designers. Hopefully this thesis and the curriculum included sets up a foundation for others to improve upon and develop curricula that integrates new media and technology into bilingual deaf education.

Providing high quality health education programs in elementary schools has many benefits for students. It teaches students to be independent, allows students to focus more on their academics, and empowers students to live healthier lifestyles (CDC website, 2016). Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive physical and mental health curriculum available in American Sign Language that meet the needs of a wide variety of D/HH students. My curriculum titled “Health and Wellness: Building Resilience in Deaf Bilingual Classrooms'' is designed from a bilingual-bicultural lens and consists of two units. The first unit addresses how best to treat our bodies with good exercise and nutrition, and the second focuses on managing our mental health. The three curriculum goals include increasing vocabulary and content knowledge of health concepts in both ASL and English; practicing critical thinking skills to manage health; and setting health goals through writing in journals and recording ASL videos. The curriculum was implemented at the Washington School for the Deaf (WSD) in Vancouver, Washington from May 4, 2021 through June 10, 2021 in a 4th grade, in-person classroom with eight students. Findings from four different types of evidence (pre/post tests, teacher observations, student videos and student artifacts) show that despite being unable to complete the entire curriculum due to Covid-19 restrictions, students benefited from an enhanced understanding of health terms and concepts in ASL as well as a greater awareness of establishing health goals and using critical thinking skills to make healthier choices.

With technology becoming more advanced and readily available in the classroom, an increasing number of teachers across the nation are seeking to flip their classrooms. That is, a flipped classroom moves lectures outside of the classroom via online videos, allowing more class time for student activities and projects. To be successful in a flipped classroom, students will need to be able to learn through instructional videos, to take notes while watching the videos, and to think aloud when working on problems with classmates. Thus, this curriculum was created as an attempt to provide teachers structured lessons to teach deaf and hard-of-hearing students how to take notes, to watch instructional videos, and to think aloud. Those three learning tools prepare students in hope to enhance their student achievement in a flipped classroom. With this curriculum, students learn three popular note-taking strategies and utilize them in taking notes while watching instructional videos. After the implementation, the data, collected through assessments, teacher observations, and students’ artifacts, showed that the students were able to take notes while watching instructional videos successfully. However, due to time constraints, they only learned one of the three note-taking strategies, and did not learn how to think aloud. Hence, the evaluation of this curriculum resulted in having three out of the four curriculum goals partially met. With more time allowed and more data collected, it was plausible that this curriculum as a whole would be effective.

The purpose of this thesis is to give new light in the role of using American Sign Language (ASL) to express scientific concepts as little research has been done in order to change STEM instruction within the Deaf and Hard of Hearing classroom. The curriculum consists of three units and seven lessons centralizing around the human body system. The three goals of this curriculum focus on increasing content knowledge in explaining how body systems are interdependent and influence our everyday lives, by creating ASL imagery of body systems, in two different styles (descriptive and expository) using media. Implementation of this curriculum was done in a period of two and a half weeks, based on the evidence presented from field notes, student vlogs, work samples and individual presentations; students showed significant growth with increase of scientific content understanding by utilizing significant ASL structures in media. All three curriculum goals were met.

The purpose of this thesis is to give new light in the role of using American Sign Language (ASL) to express personal thoughts and in embedding 5WH questions in one’s discourse, and using rhetorical statements a way of verifying information about a topic when engaging with their peers on a daily basis. This bilingual curriculum focuses on staying on point and elaborating one’s thoughts and ideas on a topic after using WH and RH questions. There is no research that has been done in order to provide discourse skills by utilizing WH questions and RH statements within the Deaf and Hard of Hearing classroom. The curriculum consists of three units that provides three sets of skills per unit for D/HH students to foster and practice their discourse skills in tie to provide their presentation to convey the message in their own words. The findings show that this discourse training is crucial in the development of learning how to be on topic.

Let’s Plant a Seed: Improving Expressive American Sign Language Skills Through Science Videos creates a curriculum to fill a need for science based curricula in young Deaf children. The curriculum aims for preschool age students to engage in the process of growing plants as well as increase their expressive language skills in American Sign Language. The curriculum involves a hands on approach to learning. Video is used to record students’ experiences which provides a language snapshot for teachers, and a window into the classroom for parents. A modified curriculum was created to be accessible for families to do at home, while still providing rich language experiences and hands-on activities.

Students with disabilities are taught how to utilize self-regulation skills and monitor their emotions. However, Deaf students with multiple disabilities, especially those with social emotional challenges, may not be explicitly taught how to use appropriate social skills to self-regulate their emotions. To address this problem, the curriculum is designed to teach students communication skills for the purpose of augmenting Deaf students’ socialization and self-regulation skills.

The curriculum used several learning theories to explicitly teach social-emotional skills; collaborative learning, intrinsic motivation, scaffolding, basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), and Theory of Mind. Deaf students need to independently self-analyze their needs as well as communicate these needs with others. The curriculum goals are to help (1) improve self-regulation skills using two languages, ASL and English to identify emotions of self and communicate socio-emotional needs, (2) apply knowledge of social-emotional learning to real life situations, and (3) enhance writing skills to express their emotions and choice of self-regulation skills to demonstrate the state of their social-emotional health. Based on the evidence from collected student work samples, observations, rubrics, and problem-solving scenarios, the students have accomplished two out of three goals.

Storytelling, as seen in educational settings, is often limited to character and plot development within the constraints of a storybook. However, the depth and power that lies within the expressive nature of storytelling far exceeds the pages of any book. Our personal stories are a collection of each lived experience, value, tradition, and cultural knowledge that weaves our individual stories. From early adolescence into adulthood, individuals bring with them cultural capital that becomes the foundational blueprint for their identity. My curriculum, “Fostering Identity through Stories of Culture and Social Justice,” creates opportunities for D/HH students to embrace the complexities of their individual identities and culture, while also addressing common themes of oppression, bias, and institutional power that exists within the intersections of these identities. Organized into two units, (Identity and Culture) and (Social Movements for Social Justice), this curriculum fosters the development of identity through the lens of social justice and empowerment through storytelling. Through collaboration and dialogue on a variety of topics related to identity, culture, and social justice, students will explain how their individual cultures, beliefs, and experiences influence their identity over time. Student data gathered over 6-weeks, including pre/post evaluations on conceptual knowledge, self-evaluation, self-reflection rubrics on project-based learning, and collections of student samples on inferring meaning of Deaf social issues through analysis of art, demonstrated successful integration and enrichment to D/HH students’ self-awareness and understanding of their identity complexities.

This bilingual ASL/English curriculum addresses the concepts of the Scientific Method in preparation for students to complete a Science Fair project. Eleven lessons are carried out with a multi-modal hands-on approach. The first seven lessons focus on the steps and execution of the scientific method process. The last four lessons assist with developing the skills for presenting their findings and displaying their work in both ASL and English. The goals of the curriculum is to utilize academic English and American sign language, identify steps of the scientific method, and apply these steps to independent scientific discovery. This is implemented during a ten week placement at a Deaf residential school evaluating student’s work through classroom observation, signed class discussions, written worksheets, and science fair projects in both languages.