Week 4

Both classes watched a video about a Deaf gym teacher who works at a mainstream public school.

Then we introduced signs related to school (2-5 has a slightly longer list). K-1 practiced identifying which teachers/staff at Irving have which jobs/teach which subject. In the 2-5 class, students who had not taken the class last year practiced listing who lives in their house, while my experienced students went on a School vocab picture hunt so that they could teach the new school sign vocabulary to their classmates.

k-1 school signs
2-5 extra signs

Week 3

In k-1 we started class by watching another example of Deaf storytelling called "The Hotel." Traditional Deaf stories are often humorous, usually highlighting the difference between the Deaf and Hearing worlds. We reviewed our family vocabulary by using my family tree. Students then practiced telling who lives in their house. No new handouts were given.

In 2-5 we watched a video about Koko, a gorilla who can communicate with sign language. It was interesting to see how she learned to sign and to compare and contrast her signing to humans signing.  We learned signs for Family vocabulary (see week 2 post for link to handout) using the Sakellaris' family's tree.

Week 2

Oops, looks like the blog posts I had been putting up each week actually didn't post!

During our 2nd class, the K-1 kids watched an ABC handshape story (these stories are an important part of Deaf culture) called "The Cowboy" while 2-5 grades students watched a different handshape story "Skiing." Then students divided up into groups and created their own short handshape stories about activities like making a pizza crust, playing baseball, and going in a haunted house.

Both classes reviewed fingerspelling and introductions. We also talked about to ask Yes/No questions versus WH questions.

K-1 began learning Family related signs, but we waited on that for 2-5 since all the 3rd graders were out on a field trip.

Family signs