This week for my ASL inquiry process, I learned signs that would be useful in the classroom. My main focus when I decided to learn ASL, was to learn phrases and signs that I could potentially use with my students in the classroom. Finding different ways to communicate with students who may be hard of hearing or who speak little English is something that is often neglected in classrooms. Teachers often rely on translators or EAs to build a bridge of communication between themselves and the student. There are further steps us teachers can take to include all students when communicating with the classroom and using ASL is definitely one of them.
This helpful YouTube video listed 25 easy and helpful signs that can be used in the bathroom. Some of the signs shown in the video included, “bathroom/toilet,” “water,” “help,” “go to,” “come,” “pay attention,” “yes,” “no,” “work,” “please,” and “quiet.”
This is the sign for “help.”
Not only can these signs be helpful for EAL or hard-of-hearing students, it can also be helpful to communicate with other students in the class without having to talk over anyone. For example, if you are reading a story to the class and a student needs to use the bathroom or would like a sip of water, they can easily sign the word without interrupting the story or distracting other students.
Creating your own sign??
I also recently learned that you can create a sign for your name! So if my name is Enora, I can sign my name using the ASL alphabet, or I can come up with my own sign for “Enora.” I found this super interesting and also useful for those who have very long names and have to fingerspell every letter every time they introduce themselves. Creating your own sign allows you to be creative and show your personality through signing, just like how we show traits of our personality in the way that we speak. As I continue to learn more and more ASL, I’ve slowly started to realized that it really isn’t that much different from any other spoken languages. It is a form of communication that gathers people together, that tells a story, and that molds to each individuals personality.
