This day-long workshop is designed for Teachers of the Deaf and other professionals who support deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students. This training will focus on:

• Conceptualising language development for DHH learners with intellectual disabilities, complex communication needs, & reduced early access to language (considering precursors to language expression)
• Promoting foundational language comprehension (separate from vocab building)
• Fostering language-rich environments (outside of “language teaching time”)
• Strategising to engage with other professionals (including navigating not-so-easy-to-work-with colleagues) to increase understanding of languaging

This workshop will be useful for professionals who seek alternative ways of measuring DHH students’ learning beyond “vocabulary lists and expressive output.” Itinerant ToDs and other professionals in/ associated with Deaf Education who wish to explore ideas for promoting carryover of lessons are likely to find this workshop useful. Participants will have an opportunity to discuss promoting language comprehension as well as to try out strategies for communicating the importance of building language-rich environments with colleagues.