Pre-School Education
Primary Education
Each bilingual class is staffed by a teacher of the deaf who is a competent Auslan user, a regular class teacher and part time staff consisting of Deaf instructors, a speech pathologist and interpreter. The number of children in the class is made up of a regular class size of hearing children with deaf and hearing impaired children additional to this. Where possible CODAs (children of deaf adults) and siblings of deaf children are placed in these classes.
An Auslan interpreter is used for some time each week to enable children to develop skills in using an interpreter. It also serves the practical purpose of allowing mixed deaf and hearing groups. When the teacher of the deaf is instructing, voice interpreting is used to reinforce the equal status of both languages.
After Grade 2, the Deaf children are introduced to Deaf Studies which is taught by a Deaf teacher of the deaf.
The regular classroom teacher and teacher of the deaf operate as a team devising whole class programs together and within the classroom share most of the teaching. The teacher of the deaf has primary responsibility for English language programming and teaching for the deaf and hearing impaired students.
The operation of the classroom is dictated by the following principles:
Primary Education
Auslan as a L.O.T.E
(Language Other Than English)
The Language Experience Group and Playgroup
The (ETA) English Through Auslan Group
The education for primary school aged deaf children in the Claremont Project is based around bilingual-bicultural classes made up of hearing and deaf children. The aim of these classes is to enable children to develop academically through their first language, to learn a second language, to develop a healthy self esteem as a hearing or deaf person and to gain an appreciation of their own and the others' culture.
