Week 8

K-1
We began class by watching more of Florida School for the Deaf's version of Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. Students kept their eyes out for signs about animals in preparation for this day's lesson.

We learned the signs for Colors and Animals. Students practiced the new vocabulary by playing zookeepers who had to catch escaped animals.

basic animals
colors

2-5
We began class by watching more of Wonderstruck. Students especially liked the scene where a newly deafened boy is taught the fingerspelled alphabet by hearing boy who learned it at school. We discussed communication challenges between people with a hearing loss and people without one--difficulties of lipreading due to practice or darkness or mustaches, writing notes and trying to remember to put everything you are saying on the paper, etc. The kids are really enjoying the movie!

We then learned the signs for Colors and Animals. The school photocopier was out of paper, so I did not have enough copies of all the animals signs for everyone. I will bring those to class next week, but in the meantime they are available here.  Everyone received a copy of the Colors handout from earlier in this entry and an extra page on animals:

extra animals

The gym was busy, so we hope to do fingerspelling baseball next week!

Week 7

It's the week before spring break!

K-1 finished watching Florida School for the Deaf's version of Wizard of Oz and then watched some of their production of Snow White and the 7 Dwarves.  Students were able to find signs in the stories that they knew such as FATHER, MOTHER, DAUGHTER, BABY, 

2-5 watched the beginning of an award winning movie adaptation of Brian Selznick's book "Wonderstruck." This movie features a 13 yo Deaf actress named Millicent Simmonds as a young deaf girl in the 1920s who is isolated by her father's refusal to communicate with her so she goes off in search of her mother. This storyline alternates with that of a young boy who loses his hearing due to a freak accident during a storm and begins a journey to try and find his father.