This week I learned how to have basic small conversations, but while I was researching I found this amazing website and I just had to give it a plug!! It is called Sign School, this website is so cool it is a free site, that does require you to make an account, where you can pick the level of sign you are at. It has three different categories once you have set up your account, there is a topic tab where you can learn conversational ASL based on your interests, there’s a spot to learn grammar, and lastly, there is a spot for different tools. Ok but now that I have given this amazing site the highlight it deserves now we can go into what I learned and this week went!

This week I learned the basics of a conversation in ASL. I learned all sorts of small talk like the weather, how to ask people how they are, and how to answer that question. During this week I also came across this YouTube page called Learn How to Sign. It is amazing it breaks down what a sign is and has so many different videos that allow you to skip to different parts of the video to learn certain parts of the video. Lastly, it also talks about a key part of conversational sign language which is facial expression. When using ASL you cannot hear the tone of voice so your body language and facial expressions become so important to almost exaggerate at times and make it bold.

Below are the specific videos I used from Learn How to Sign for each topic:

What did I learn?

While going over this blog post I realized a super great way to incorporate weather signs into the classroom would be during opening circle. Just like I talked about earlier if you don’t use ASL (American Sign Language), like any other language you will lose it. In younger grades some teachers will often incorporate a morning circle or meeting into their classroom structure. So when discussing the weather you could incorporate using ASL to discuss the different types of weather. I think this would be a great way to show them different signs and get them to use it everyday and helps with the whole idea of you use it you lose it because it would be something you could use in your every day routine. I also have found that for my own learning experience I am slowly starting to relearn sign. I never really got this in depth with learning ASL and then applying it to my career and actually getting serious about it.