American Sign Language
Last week one of our Reading stories was called "The William Hoy Story" by Nancy Churnin. It was a biography about a deaf boy who changed how the game of baseball was played. We learned that he used sign language to communicate with his family, friends, coaches, and teammates. We have a sign language alphabet poster and several books in our classroom to go with this story. The children have been excited to practice the alphabet in sign language and learn how to spell their own names. This afternoon we invited Mrs. Jansma in to our classroom to share her knowledge about signing. We learned that she became interested in ASL when she was in 2nd grade, babysat for a small child from her hometown who was deaf, and went to Augustana College to learn more about teaching sign language. She used to be a teacher at a deaf school in Sioux Falls and enjoys interpreting. The children were very interested in learning how to sign words such as: yes, no, hello, goodbye, friend, mother, father, grandma, grandpa, sister, brother, teacher, pencil, bathroom, drink, juice, calm down, quiet, relax, applause, please, thank you, sorry, and Jill's personal favorite....turtle. Our personal favorites were bathroom and applause as we use them every day in our classroom. She also took the time to teach us some words to sign for our ROAR story. This will definitely help us keep ROARing and reaching expectations here at school. Thanks for being an inspiration to us today, Mrs. Jansma. Sign language sure is interesting!
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