Hearing Impairment
Hearing Impairment can have a significant impact on learning and cause reading and spelling difficulties. Over time, the average hearing impaired student will show an ever increasing gap in vocabulary growth, complex sentence comprehension and construction, as well as in concept formation, as compared to students with normal hearing.
Hearing impaired students often learn to "feign" comprehension with the end result being that the student does have optimal learning opportunities.” http://www.as.wvu.edu/~scidis/hearing.html
Therefore it is vital that hearing impaired students who need to wear a hearing aid do so, as they can miss vital parts of instructions. At Aotea College we have many students who are hearing impaired.
Group Special Education (GSE) provides support for students with significant hearing loss and there are also itinerant teachers of the deaf available. http://www.vanasch.school.nz/