Category: Free Inquiry

Part of the reason I wanted to learn some basic ASL was to increase the scope of the students I can support within my role. As a teacher, I am responsible for the wellbeing of my students and providing them with the necessary support. Something that I thought would be important to learn during my project was a few of the main ASL medical signs. Although I still have a long way to go, I think that at least starting to build my ability to recognize these signs would be a good start. I found an awesome video that is about 10 minutes long that went through some of the most important/popular medical ASL signs. I have embedded it below if you were curious and wanted to learn a few yourself!

They went over about 40 different signs/phrases. While it was a lot to take in, I hope that over time I can practice them and with review they will become more accessible to me. It was interesting to learn a few of the signs and how they build directly off the ASL alphabet. For instance, the sign for “hospital” uses an “H” hand and draws the shape of a hospital cross on your shoulder.  Another example is the sign for “doctor”, it uses the sign for the letter “D” or “M” on the wrist like you’re checking the radial pulse.

A few other interesting concepts that I was able to recognize within this video was the nonverbal components of signing and how they play a role within different signs. For instance, when signing a question such “are you okay/alright?” the signer raises their eyebrows to indicate a question is being asked. Another example is using facial expressions to emphasize the sign. One of the examples was in signing “nauseous”. With this sign, the individual made a facial expression to express that they feel unwell.

For the remaining weeks of my Free Inquiry Inquiry Project I hope to explore the resources available that exists for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. As well, I would like to identify local resources available in Victoria and BC.

I began my research by exploring the Canadian Hearing Services website. An incredible resource that I found was the Effective Practices Guidebook for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students transition to post-secondary education and employment guide. The section that I focussed on the most was Empowering Education, where there was extensive information about terminology, accessibility, universal design, system change, and attitude changes.

Within the terminology section I was able to learn more about using the audiological labels of Deaf vs. D/deaf vs. deaf when referring to students. For instance, Deaf students are those that identify with the Deaf community as a distinct cultural group and use sign language to communicate. Whereas hard of hearing or deaf students typically use the spoken language and their residual hearing to communicate, which may be supported by additional strategies such as speech reading, sign language, the use of hearing aids or other technical devices.

This resource also identifies several communication barriers that D/deaf or hard of hearing students commonly face. Some examples of these barriers include:

• Environmental barriers such as the sight lines available, lighting levels, distance and additional noise.
• Access to different services such as sign language interpretation, real-time captions or written notes, etc.
• Availability of technology at schools such as assistive listening devices and effective computer communication.
• Misconceptions about D/deaf and hard of hearing students by their peers, teachers, school faculty, etc.

In our discussion with Tracy Humphry’s she discussed ableism and the belief system that exists towards peoples with disabilities and how society misconstrues D/deaf or hard of hearing individuals’ abilities. Audism is a form of discrimination that is based on a person’s hearing ability or their ability to behave in the manner of someone who hears. Something powerful from her presentation was when she was addressing what we can do as teacher candidates for students with disabilities.She stated that advocacy is essential; being willing to advocate for students within their education experiences will validate them and make them feeling valued within your classroom. As teachers it is so important that we make our students feel seen, heard and valued, as well as making sure they see themselves being represented in the school content and activities.

Last weekend I took some time to explore some of my Youtube resources and learn more about ASL and signing technique. The main video I watched was by a channel called Learn How to Sign, which is run by a woman who is a certified ASL instructor and educational interpreter in the USA. The video I chose to watch was “The 5 Rules for EVERY Sign in ASL: 5 Parameters of Sign” (see below).

My main takeaways from this video are summarized below, check it out!

The 5 rules of signing include:

1. Hand shape: the shape of your hand(s) as you perform a sign
2. Palm orientation: the direction that your palm is facing as you sign
3. Location: where your hands are in proximity to your body (i.e. anchored on your body, head, or in neutral space).
4. Movement: variety of forms of movement that contribute to a sign
5. Non-manual signs: facial expression and body language (i.e. eyebrow movements, mouth morphemes, expressions, etc).

*Some signs use two hands, incorporate varied amounts of movement or none, require a facial expression or morpheme (mouth sound).

Breaking down the ASL sign for sad:

(refer to video for demonstration)

1. Hand shape: both hands are used a “five” hand shape
2. Palm orientation: facing in towards the body
3. Location: in neutral space in front of face and going down to the chest area
4. Movement: moving down
5. Non-manual signs: show the facial expression for sad
   • To change the intensity of emotion, in this case, to show a deeper level of sadness, you must adjust your non-manual signs/facial expression to illustrate.

For the past week I have been trying to challenge myself to practice the alphabet on a daily basis. Whenever I see my reflection in a mirror I have to either spell my name, or sign the alphabet. It has been difficult to remember to do every time, but it definitely has kept me more accountable in my learning. See below a mini video I made that captures a few of the times I practiced. I got to fiddle around with iMovie to make this video, and I had to refer back to some of the lesson we had on editing from a previous class.

I’ve got some exciting news, I feel like I am finally getting the hang of the alphabet. I watched a few more videos this week and found one that really practiced the alphabet in a way that cemented my learning. I’ve embedded it below if anyone is interested. Basically, the instructor goes through the alphabet nice and slowly, and after introducing each new letter, they go through the entire alphabet again until that next point. This method of revision really helped me to practice each letter and get more comfortable transitioning between them with my hands. 

Something else that I did this week was explore some online resources for learning ASL outside of the realm of Youtube. I was blown away at the amount that I found. I’ve listed the main ones I explored below:

Signing Time Dictionary:

An online subscription resource for teaching children ASL that contains multiple modalities for learning ASL in a digital learning environment. This resource was created by a couple whose first child was born deaf and wanted to support her and families like theirs. On this website you can use their resources for a free trial, and progress to investing in monthly subscriptions where you receive new lessons and content each month. 

Hand Speak-ASL Dictionary:

This one is my favorite one I found. It is an online dictionary resource where you can type in any word, and it will give you the definition as well as the ASL sign for it. As well, it has a list of the 100 most popular terms used when first learning ASL, which was really cool for me to explore. Each word in the list is linked to its own video(s) to show its sign. This website was a very simple and straightforward resource to use and could be very useful in teaching and learning ASL for beginners. It could even be a great replacement for activities in younger grades that require students to use Dictionary.com. They would still get to learn the definition/meaning of the word, while getting the added experience of learning the sign. 

I attached a screen recording of me demonstrating how it works below! 

ASL Forum: ASL Fingerspelling Word Search Generator:

I believe in  one of my last posts I mentioned how one of my learning pod members had shown me an ASL word search activity she found. I decided to find a free resource to generate my own word search and try it out. I found this word search generator on a website called ASL Forum, which allows you to add several words of your choosing and develop activity sheets to use. Not only is this a great resource for teachers to use when teaching ASL and incorporating it into the classroom, but I was able to try it out and found it incredibly helpful. I created a puzzle full of names to mimic a potential team-building/icebreaker activity that could be done at the start of a school year to learn classmates’ names. It took me a lot longer than I thought to recognize each letter, but eventually I got it. Check out the word search below!

Okay, to be perfectly honest this last week and a half has been challenging to stay accountable to my Free Inquiry Schedule. It seems that we are entering a very busy part of the semester, so as I go forward with this project I will have to be more diligent in creating time and space for my inquiry. With that being said, I think that falling behind in this project has provided a great example/learning experience for the realities of these sorts of projects, as well as a lot of the work we will do as teachers. There always has to be an element of flexibility to our lesson plans and project timelines, etc. because the reality of the world is that stuff happens and we fall behind, forget, run out of time, run into unforeseen obstacles, and make errors. With this project for instance, I had high hopes and expectations that I would be more capable in my ASL practices at this time. However, when I looked at my to-do list for this week I realized I was not in a place where I felt that I could watch new youtube tutorial videos, and instead decided to revisit the ones from previous weeks.

On a more productive note, something cool happened this week during a meeting with one of my learning pod members. We were discussing our progress on our projects and they showed me a post on Reddit of a resource for teaching ASL and visual recognition of the alphabet. The resource they showed me was an ASL word search puzzle. Being that I am using Youtube as my main resource for my own learning, I haven’t started exploring the other resources that exist. There are so many ways to learn, as well as ways to adapt common resources. I remember using word searches in elementary school, as well as my french classes in middle school, so it’s really incredible to see this common activity be adapted to teach ASL (see below). This collaboration with my learning pod peer also reaffirmed the importance of collaborating with peers and sharing resources. Going into this profession I am very excited for all of the opportunities I will have to share resources and ideas with others.

There are word search puzzles in sign language from mildlyinteresting

For my Free Inquiry project I have decided to learn basic American Sign Language (ASL). Along the way I hope to answer a few questions I have, including:

• How can someone learn basic ASL  and what resources are out there? How challenging/time-consuming/fun is it?
• What is the history of Sign Language within Canada?
• Are there current opportunities to engage students in ASL lessons within the BC Education Curriculum? If not, how could ASL be implemented?
• What types of resources are/are not available to students of the Deaf Community within our schools?