Bi-bi methods for early literacy?

[flip]

I work as teacher, and my deaf kids can now spell names and some words. They are also expanding their sign language skills at a rapid rate, thank god. But not sure wich direction I should go now, so try to ask for some advice here.

I am deaf myself, and feels that some of the older deaf kids here have bad literacy skills, due to overuse of SEE from hearing teachers, and total communication strategies lacking directions, giving deaf kids limited access to progressive questioning and explainations on a high level.

General theory books about literacy among kids, I got here, have good arguments that kids have to crack the reading code with the use of alphabet and how they sounds. This leaves me standing out there, with limited resources, as I do not know how to do this with those deaf kids.

I am also wondering about people saying that remembering whole words, is too hard, and not a good way to learn to read. Several books says the same, and I can understand it very well, and willing to belive it, but feels not 100% sure about this, as I wonder how do the chinese kids then learn to read, when they do not have alphabet, but thousands of images they have to remember? Does someone have some direct experience on this, or know research done in this field with deaf kids?

I am not asking for another interesting cued speech/PSE/SEE/bi-bi dicussions, but sources for bi-bi(sign language/"SEE") methods to crack the reading code for deaf kids, and how they work?

We are located in europe, and english is not part of my or the kids' native language, so don't worry, if you think I am going to learn my kids the grammar errors that you can find in this text

Flip

 

[ismi]

I am also wondering about people saying that remembering whole words, is too hard, and not a good way to learn to read. Several books says the same, and I can understand it very well, and willing to belive it, but feels not 100% sure about this, as I wonder how do the chinese kids then learn to read, when they do not have alphabet, but thousands of images they have to remember?

In the 1950s or 60s, the Chinese government created (or at least, began to promote) a system of writing called pinyin, that allows Chinese to be written using the same alphabet we use, for exactly this reason - the characters were hard enough that people weren't learning to read and write. Chinese children learn that system first, then the characters. Non-Chinese learning Chinese do the same - they start with pinyin, then learn the characters.

I don't know anything about the other part of your question, though.