Deaf awareness raising activities

In this section you will find a range of activities that can be used to develop deaf awareness in your school. They have been devised to be used in primary schools but can easily be adapted for use in secondary schools.

There are around 35,000 deaf children and young people in the UK. The majority are educated in mainstream schools alongside their hearing peers. Some of these children are the only deaf child in their class, or even the whole school. It is vital that their hearing friends learn how to be deaf aware.

The aim of these activities is to raise hearing pupils’ deaf awareness, and facilitate the social inclusion of deaf children.

By particpating in the suggested activities, hearing pupils will increase their knowledge of deafness and improve their ability to communicate effectively with their deaf peers.

The activities here are taken from the Deaf friendly activity pack which is a development in the Deaf Friendly series and links to the previous four Deaf Friendly publications:

• Deaf Friendly Nurseries and Preschools
• Deaf Friendly Schools
• Deaf Friendly Teaching
• Deaf Friendly Schools Pledge.

This section contains the contents page for the activity pack and an introduction to the materials.

To become deaf aware pupils should have some understanding of how sound is made and produced. They also need to be aware of how the ear works.

In this section, pupils learn about how sound is made and produced.

Every deaf child is different. It is important that children understand deaf children may experience different levels of hearing loss and may use different kinds of hearing aids to help them listen.

In this section, the children learn about:

• different levels of hearing loss
• different kinds of hearing aids
• how to reduce classroom noise.

Deafness is not a disability but not being able to communicate effectively is.

In this section, the children will learn about what good communication is and how we listen. They will also find out how we can communicate without speaking, and try out fingerspelling and lip-reading.

It is important that all children understand that their deaf friends are just like them.

It is a great idea to get the children to put their learning into practice.

In this section, the children will learn how to put on a deaf friendly event and will have the opportunity to find out what else they want to know about deafness.

Some of the activities refer to accompanying resources - these can be found in this section.

The Deaf friendly activity pack from which these activities are taken is accompanied by a Deaf friendly training pack.

The aim of the training pack is to develop mainstream teachers and other staff’s understanding of deafness, and provides tools and techniques to ensure teachers are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to fully include deaf pupils in school life.

The training is to be delivered by a teacher of deaf children or a specialist teacher in the school who has reliable knowledge or experience of deafness.

If you would like a copy of this pack please contact NDCS's Freephone Helpline on 0808 800 8880.

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