Friends, friends, who are my friends?

My friends are all different, but we are special in our own way.

Hi! My name is Zoey. I am 5 years old. Would you like to meet my friends?

Meet Jennifer. She wears hearing aids because she is hard of hearing. That means that she can’t hear very well. The hearing aids are like speakers that are made just for her, which helps her hear us.

This is Kevin. Kevin moves around in a wheelchair, because his legs don’t work for him to walk. He can go so fast in his wheelchair! 

Matt! There he is! Matt is autistic and knows a lot about dinosaurs. Sometimes the class gets too loud and he leaves to have some alone time. Our class works really hard to not get too loud so Matt can stay in the classroom all day with us.

That’s Emily. Emily can’t hear us, because she is deaf. Instead of talking with her mouth she uses her hands- it’s called sign language. Our class is learning sign language that way we can communicate with Emily, but for now she has an interpreter. That means that we use our mouths to talk to her and the interpreter tells Emily what we are saying using her hands and then Emily uses sign language to tell the interpreter what to say back to us. It is called translating. 

This is Mark, he often gets frustrated because It is hard for him to read, write and spell. He has dyslexia and for him its seems all the letters are mixed up. We work in a small group to help him understand the lessons and it's fun when we get to share audio books together.