Written language is made up of alphabetic letters that relate to speech sounds. What do you do if you can't hear speech sounds?

When speech sounds are not accessible, we need another way to understand how letters are combined to make words. For some of our deaf students, this has come in the form of fingerspelling. At the start of this year, a group of curious teachers undertook specialised training to understand the theory behind this research-based fingerspelling programme to use it with key students. These teachers and students have been very willing guinea pigs and have seen improvements in students' confidence, sign language vocabulary and spelling ability. One student said he enjoys each activity and loves sharing his learning with his classmates. Another teacher reports that her student is beginning to connect with other phonetic words he sees through reading other texts.

Other students have commented:

"It helps me write more words in my writing because I know first sound, last chunk."

"It helps me know how and where to fingerspell the words- where to spell [clearly] on my body so people I am talking to can see good".

"It helps me to learn NZSL for the different words. I like learning about the last chunk because it helps me know new words."