The project: “Teaching Signed Languages as a First Language” (SIGN FIRST) is based on the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Universal Design for Learning, the Paris Declaration, data driven results and recent best practices for the development of literacy in students with hearing impairments.International studies show that the vast majority (90-95%) of deaf children have hearing parents and they grow up without having access to the language of their parents or caretakers. With minimal signed and/or spoken linguistic input in the early years, the children are deprived the opportunity to acquire a first language and hence to adequately develop communicative and world knowledge.The most recent study of Hrastinski & Wilbur (2016) on the effects of sign language proficiency on reading comprehension skills and academic achievement of deaf and hard of hearing students suggested that students highly proficient in sign language outperformed their less proficient peers in nationally standardized measures of reading comprehension, English language use, and mathematics. They showed that sign language proficiency was the single variable significantly predicting results on all outcome measures. This study strongly supports the aims of our implemented project by focusing on sign language fluency.Our implemented project aimed at achieving the bilingual literacy development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children so they can be educated in an effective inclusive school environment.The SIGN FIRST project specifically aimed and achieved to fill existing skills' gaps by the development of a teaching curriculum and educational materials for teaching European Sign Languages to deaf students as a first language. Additionally, the project aimed and developed sign language assessment instruments for this target group.The age group of the students that the implemented project targets are children that attend Kindergarten to 2nd grade of primary school (K-2), ages from 4 to 7 years old. However the programme can be and was implemented with deaf children in higher grades as well.Seven participants from four countries are part of the Project. One Educational policy Institute, one Research and Development Center, two Universities, two Schools of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and one private sector company, all experts in the education of the deaf and Sign Language, constituted the Strategic Partnership: 1. The Institute of Educational Policy (IEP), Greece. 2. The Dutch Sign Centre, Nederlands Gebarencentrum (NGC), Nederlands. 3. The University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education Zurich (HfH), Switzerland. 4. European University (EUN), Cyprus. 5. Kindergarten for the Deaf and hard of hearing of Argyroupolis (KindArg), Greece. 6. Kindergarten and Special elementary school for the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing of Likovrisi- Pefki (ElemLP), Greece. 7. Habilis (HB), Greece.A wide and flexible range of activities and innovative practices have been implemented: 1. Sign Language curricula, common modules (including e-modules). 2. Learning, teaching, training, materials and methods, pedagogical approaches and tools for teaching European Sign Languages as a first language. 3. Peer-learning, workshops in three countries. 4. Information, guidance, coaching and counselling activities for parents and teachers. 5. Surveys, comparative analyses, evidence-gathering for state of the art SL teaching. 6. Networking, promotion and awareness-raising activities in the EU and internationally. The activities are based on participatory methods that:• Offered space for interaction of participants (deaf and hearing), sharing of ideas, avoiding passive listening / seeing.• Empowered the participants to contribute to the activities with their own knowledge and skills.• Ensured that participants had influence over project decisions, not just involvement.• Offered participants the opportunity to identify common values with persons from different cultures (Deaf and Hearing, different countries) • Promoted the respect of cultural diversity of Deaf and Hearing, signed and spoken languages. By the end of the 29 months project, the following outcomes have been obtained in alignment with project objectives: 1. Collected and document European Best Practices and are available to all in the project's web site www.sign1st.eu . 2. Developed evidence based tools to raise the quality of Sign Language teaching. 3. Developed systematic transfer of knowledge in teaching European Signed Languages as a first language. 4. Shared common teaching strategies, practices and educational material locally as well as internationally. The implementation of the project “Sign First” had an impact on teaching Greek Sign Language to deaf students as a public law with Government Gazette 2103, issue B ' published on 19.06.2017.