This year on my caseload, I have a student who is on the Autism Spectrum, and also deaf. This student is using a combination of a cochlear implant, a communication device, and sign. We try to get our students integrated as much as we can within the school community, so I wanted to figure out a way to expose as many people in the school as possible to some sign. Most people leave the building by passing by my room, so I thought about making a bulletin board with some signs. I came up with a sign of the week area, and let everyone know to try to take a glance at it every week to learn a new sign that our student uses.
I found a great website called http://www.babysignlanguage.com that had a lot of flashcards of signs. I'm not sure that they are all exact ASL, but so far, they have matched up with what our little guy is doing.
I also looked up the signs on You Tube and made QR codes for each one. People can scan the code and watch a video of the sign, to get a better idea of how to do each sign.
Here are a few of the posters that I made for future weeks:
I don't own the rights to any of the pictures or videos, so I can't share the actual posters I have made, but I wanted to share the idea with you. These posters are super easy to make in Power Point.
After I told the staff about what I was doing, I had a lot of great, positive feedback. I have seen several people, not just staff, stop at the board and check it out. One day I even saw a Kindergarten student sitting there signing the alphabet. It reminded me of myself when I was little. My favorite book was Helen Keller, and there was a sign language alphabet in the back. I loved figuring out how to sign all kinds of words!
Hope some of you can use this idea too!
Great idea!
ReplyDeletethanks!
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