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Why Isn’t the Bedrock Manual Laid Out Like a Traditional Curriculum?
Creating a rigid, one-size-fits-all trajectory for literacy development in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students is nearly impossible. Students vary widely in their language backgrounds, communication modes, access to English, and ASL proficiency.
For this reason, the Bedrock manual is designed not as a scripted curriculum, but as a flexible framework to help teachers build a solid foundation for lifelong literacy. Because it must serve teachers across many grade levels, a fixed sequence would not be practical or meaningful.
Instead, Bedrock provides core components of literacy development—the “building blocks” of reading, writing, and language—and illustrates how to teach these through sample lessons and concept-based activities. Teachers are encouraged to adapt the ideas to their own students’ needs. With this structure and guidance, teachers gain a clear path forward while maintaining the freedom to meet each learner where they are.
Many DHH students reach middle or even high school without strong foundational literacy skills. They can often “read” words, but with limited comprehension, and they may write very little because they are unsure how to represent their thoughts in English. These students are cognitively capable—but years of fragmented approaches, a lack of targeted materials, and insufficient teacher preparation have left deep gaps in how literacy is taught from the very beginning.
The seriousness of this cannot be overstated. The Bedrock manual was written for teachers, parents, support staff—and for anyone dedicated to helping DHH students become literate, independent thinkers.
While it does not prescribe a step-by-step script, it offers a flexible developmental framework that can be applied just as effectively in early elementary classrooms as with struggling older students.
The purpose of Bedrock is to help teachers identify the essential components of English literacy and to understand how these elements build upon one another. It asks the key question:
What are the critical building blocks every student must have in place to continue developing literacy for the rest of their life?
The Bedrock Literacy Manual helps teachers understand how to design instruction that truly meets the needs of students who have had limited access to spoken English or conventional print-based instruction.
Specifically, Bedrock helps teachers:
For students who are brand new to English—or those seriously struggling and at risk in their literacy development—Bedrock provides a clear starting point and flexible framework.
Start with developing a core set of words (approximately 50) from Unit 5. Teachers can select words that are most useful for their class context. This core word base allows students to engage immediately in daily reading and fluency comprehension activities.
Once students can instantly recognize around 50 words, they are ready to begin reading and writing activities.
Spelling practice and visual memory strategies for retaining these words are described in Chapter 6.
While vocabulary work continues, teachers can introduce two foundational conceptual units—both supported with pictures when needed:
These can run simultaneously with the “Big Three” areas—Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing.
After students can instantly recognize about 50 core words, teachers introduce
Beginning Reading.
This chapter provides clear explanations for helping students connect print with meaning—without relying on phonology.
Independent writing can begin early—as soon as students can link ASL handshapes to English letters or numbers.
The "Handshape Holder" technique is a visual-kinesthetic method that acts as a bridge from thought to print, allowing students to write what they mean, even before they know many English words.
Once students can express simple ideas (2–4 concepts per sentence) in writing, teachers can begin the grammar units, expanding students’ ability to structure and elaborate in English.
The grammar units in Bedrock are designed primarily as informational guides for teachers. Their purpose is to deepen teachers’ understanding of how complex grammar instruction can be for DHH students, while offering practical starting points for developing the macro-structures that form the foundation of English syntax.
The first major grammar concept to introduce is:
These units help students grasp how parts of a sentence work together to form meaning.
The more advanced topics—Negation (Unit 15) and Tense (Unit 12)—should be introduced only after students have significant experience with simpler sentence forms.
Grammar instruction must begin with structure before focusing on the internal parts.
Students need to understand where to put things in a sentence before they can label them as nouns, verbs, or adjectives.
One of Bedrock’s key goals is to help teachers reconsider how grammar is taught to DHH learners. Rather than relying on auditory cues or rote memorization, teachers are encouraged to focus on visual, conceptual understanding of sentence structures—how English “fits together” to create meaning.
For a full, developmentally sequenced grammar curriculum, teachers are encouraged to explore the Bilingual Grammar Curriculum (BGC) developed by Dr. Todd Czubek and Dr. Kristin Di Perri.
Learn more at www.bgcasl.org.
Bedrock gives teachers both a roadmap and a toolkit for building literacy from the ground up—one that honors how DHH students learn best:
visually, conceptually, and through meaningful communication that connects ASL and English.