AbstractsMathematics

The existence of instructional television for the deaf is minimal. Signed and captioned programming has begun to work its way into existing television formats; however, to date there is no significant educational television designed for the primary-level hearing impaired youngster. Yet, his educational needs are greater than his hearing peers. The deaf student can partially enjoy and be educated by the glorious world of television already devised for the hearing youngster. Television is essentially a medium of visual communication and it is the premise of this study that it can be best utilized to educate the hearing-impaired youngster. It has been established that the most difficult materials for a deaf student to comprehend are concepts or abstractions such as addition and subtraction. The material herein is devised to utilize highly visual images to teach adding and subtraction to hearing-impaired youngsters. Its strategy is to serialize animated lessons as part of a regularly-broadcast children???s program in order to reach an optimum audience. Since all learning is done through reinforcement, the material herein contains nonverbal manipulative and body movement skills to utilize all the physical senses opened to the youngster. A further goal is the production and evaluation of the fifteen pilot film segments and the reinforcement skills set forth in this construct.