This year as your child enters a new school or classroom, meets new teacher(s) and makes new friends why not take the opportunity to help them educate fellow classmates about how their hearing loss makes them unique!
This could be an opportunity for you and/or your child to work with your child’s teacher to discuss ways in which all of their fellow classmates can learn about hearing loss and hearing devices. This is a great activity for your child because it builds confidence in language and communication skills, increases self-pride and teaches your child how to advocate for him/herself at school.
To complete this task, you might consider tailoring the type of educational activity you create around your child’s age and interests. Below are some ideas.
Some ideas for a younger child might be:
- Create an experience book or PowerPoint highlighting your child’s journey to getting a hearing device through different pictures and illustrations. This is a great activity that they can do over the summer and have ready to share in the fall during “show and tell” or “circle time.”
- Encourage your child’s teacher to choose a story for reading time that focuses on a young child who has a hearing loss and wears hearing devices. Another idea would be to write a short story together about your child’s hearing adventures and share that with the class during reading time.
- Provide your child’s teacher with the Kaci the Koala and Vibe the Moose coloring pages for the class to color together on an indoor recess day.
- Utilize Kaci the Koala to assist in explaining how a Cochlear device works during “show and tell” or “circle time.”
Some ideas for older children might be:
- A science unit on hearing, hearing loss and hearing solutions facilitated by the teacher and your child.
- A science project that your child completes about how his/her hearing device works.
- Work with your child to create a comic book about his/her experience wearing a hearing device and share it with the class or in the school newspaper.
- Invite an adult with a Cochlear implant to come in and speak to your child’s class about his/her experiences inside and outside of work. The adult could serve as a great role model for pre-teens and teenagers as they begin to contemplate their future after school.
- Utilize social media as a way to demonstrate to peers how many children around the world have hearing loss, wear hearing devices and are succeeding today.
These are just a few suggestions and we are sure as creative parent(s) you will be able come up with many others ideas on how to facilitate education of hearing loss and hearing devices in the classroom.
We invite you to share with us the ways your child educates their peers about his/her hearing loss on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Cochlear
We look forward to hearing about your child’s success in school!
For more information and resources on your child’s hearing loss, visit IWantYouToHear.com.
