Child Name: Lilly

Age: 4 yrs and 9 months

General information
Gender: Female
Challenges: Deaf
Family: Lives with her Mother, Father (also deaf), 2 older brothers and 1 younger brother
Housing: Lives in a 4-bedroom house. She shares her bedroom with her younger brother
Health: Good. Normal for her age
SES status: Mid range
Neighborhood: Lives in a fairly multicultural neighborhood with quite a few public housing
buildings in the area.
Extracurricular activities: Lilly enjoys going for runs especially around the park with her older
brothers. Lilly also enjoys doing craft activities and expressing herself through creative means.

Holistic Curriculum the holistic curriculum looks at the strengths, challenges and learning
priorities of the child in order to fully understand the capabilities of the child and to develop a
curriculum in which the child will benefit.
Skills, strengths and competencies (areas to celebrate, with assessment data)
Lilly thrives in a visual environment where instructions are given both verbally and in a visual
format. Lilly shows a high mathematical ability and awareness for her age. She is currently able
to count groups of items quite quickly and can do simple addition, subtraction, division and
multiplication equations when given visual clues such as pictures or objects to simulate the
equation. As Lilly relies heavily on visual cues she has advanced word recognition but does not

Child Profile:

Child Name: Lilly

Age: 4 yrs and 9 months

easily know how to pronounce words. Lilly has been shown some basic phonetic breakdowns
and is beginning to recognise how these change the way a word is pronounced, although she is
not confident in her speaking ability. Lilly enjoys being creative as she is able to express herself
through visual means, which others also use. She often spends her free time in the craft area
and also likes to bring in her artwork from home to show us. Lilly is always polite and does not
demand attention. She is content to wait to ask for something through sign language until she
has your full attention. Lilly has impressive fine motor skills as she uses her hands to
communicate with her family at home and uses basic signs at kindergarten to communicate with
staff and other children.
Challenges (areas to support, with assessment data)
Lilly is currently struggling to communicate with her peers in the classroom. While she can
communicate with children she often gets frustrated if they ignore her or dont understand what
she is trying to say.
Learning Priorities (future learning goals and targets)
Our main goals for Lilly are to increase her independence and communication skills with her
parents, siblings and those in her class. We are aiming to make her contribution to the
classroom a positive one where her learning is not compromised by her lack of hearing.

Advocacy letter:
Date: 20th December 2013
Melissa Binks 4 Year old Kindergarten teacher
Organisation: Erinburg Kindergarten
Writing to: Miss Black, Lillys new prep teacher

Dear Miss Black,

As Lillys kindergarten teacher, I am writing to you on behalf of her family to inform you of her learning
strengths and needs. Lilly has been a valuable asset to our group here at Erinburg. Her situation has
helped us to shape our learning environment into one of inclusion and we have been able to gain
some valuable skills from her and her family. As you may already know Lilly was born with a hearing
impairment, which over time has meant she has completely lost her hearing. Lilly had a 50% chance
of being deaf when she was born due to genetic factors (ASHA, n.d.). Lillys father and one of her
older brothers are also deaf giving her a supportive and understanding background. The Australian
government (2013) recognizes loss of hearing where communication is restricted, or an aid to assist
with, or substitute for, hearing is used as a disability. Whilst Lilly does have a disability and needs
some extra support she is a very capable child who is engaged in a classroom setting. Lilly is only
just learning how to talk through the help of her speech therapist but is willing to give every new
activity a go.

When Lilly first entered our learning area she had never been in a structured education setting with
children who were not deaf. For Lilly it took a few weeks for her to settle in to our program. To help
with Lillys transition into the kindergarten setting we began to learn some basic sign language in
which Lilly was already familiar. I found that by learning a simple way of communicating with Lilly she
was able to relax in the classroom and become more engaged with the days routine. While learning
sign language benefits Lilly it can also benefit other children in your classroom as well. Research
shows that hearing children who are exposed to speech and sign language demonstrate improved
language, literacy and mathematical skills and even increased IQ(McConnell, 2007). By teaching the
other children sign language Lilly is supported in outcome 2 of the Early Years Learning Framework
(EYLF), which states that Children are connected with and contribute to their world(DEEWR, 2009).
Another example of how learning sign language relates to the EYLF is out come 5 which outlines that
children are effective communicators and in particular that children interact verbally and non-

verbally with others for a range of purposes (DEEWR, 2009). By teaching sign language to children
in your class you are creating an inclusive environment for Lilly and creating a means for other
students to communicate with her. According to Staden, Badenhorst & Ridge (2011) deaf learners
who are unable to communicate their needs, thoughts and experiences may experience social
isolation, depression and a low self-concept. In Lillys case other educators and myself at Erinburg
have worked hard to ensure that Lilly has not felt isolated from the other children in our classroom
and we are hoping that Lilly will continue to feel included in her educational environment.

I urge you to consider putting in the time and effort needed to ensure that Lilly feels connected to her
classroom and the content she is being taught. There are many great resources designed for outside
and also inside the classroom that you may find helpful as Lilly transitions into your prep classroom.
Deaf Children Australia offers information sheets on some of the facts around deafness as well as
many resources and further websites that may be of use. While working with a deaf student can be a
challenge it is also a highly rewarding experience. You are able to be a part of teaching a child a
whole new skill set and you will be able to experience the joy that Lilly feels when she is able to learn
something new and develops her speech further. Please keep me updated with her progress and do
not hesitate to contact me if you would like to know more of the strategies we used to assist Lillys
development.
Sincerely,

Melissa Binks

References:
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (n.d.). Causes of hearing loss in children. Retrieved
from: http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Causes-of-Hearing-Loss-in-Children/#congenital

Australian government (2013) Authoritative information and statistics to promote better health and
wellbeing. Retrieved from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/definition-of-disability/

DEEWR. (2009). Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for
Australia. Retrieved from: http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Q
uality/Documents/Final%20EYLF%20Framework%20Report%20-%20WEB.pdf

McConnell, Jenny. Love Learning: The Benefits of Sign Language [online]. Teacher: The National
Education Magazine, Dec 2007: 50-52. Retrieved from:
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=905971735263704;res=IELHSS

Van Staden, A., Badenhorst, G., & Ridge, E. (2011). The benefits of sign language for deaf learners
with language challenges. Per Linguam, 25(1). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5785/25-1-28

Advocacy letter template sourced from:

These Three Australia.(n.d.) . Sample advocacy letter . Retrieved from:
https://thesethree.com/Sample_Advocacy_Letter.html#.UyglkF6pq2x