Bilingual Literacy Curricula for Bilingual Deaf Students

There is often a disconnect between the reading curriculum used in public schools with hearing students and what best practice suggests for bilingual deaf students (students who use American Sign Language (ASL) and print and/or spoken English). In this article, we explore a deaf education teacher's first‐time use of two curricula designed specifically for deaf students who use ASL: the Bedrock Literacy Curriculum and the Bilingual Grammar Curriculum. This journey is chronicled through the teacher's perception of her implementation and her elementary students' responses to instruction. After sharing students' academic progress and the influence the use of these curricula had on students' self‐concept, we describe challenges encountered during a year of implementation with these two curricula. Finally, we offer our interpretations and recommendations for others who are teaching literacy skills to young deaf students.