Deaf and hearing children: Reading together in preschool

The present chapter describes an educational experience carried out within the project “Bilingual education towards deaf and hearing children’s integration”. The conceptual framework of the project refers to a bilingual approach which consists in exposing deaf and hearing kindergarten children to both sign language and spoken language. Deaf teachers used Italian Sign Language while hearing teachers used Italian and Signed Italian. The educational activities, briefly described, aimed to introduce preschoolers to early literacy within the theoretical approach developed by Ferreiro and Teberosky. Twelve children (five hearing and seven deaf) took part in the experience and their levels of conceptualization of written language were evaluated at the beginning and at the end of the school year.