As teachers you are responsible for anywhere of 20-30 students at a time and sometimes all your students want you attention at once, or when you are doing something with one student or are teaching a lesson that’s right when they have something to say to you. I know that teachers can often get frustrated when they have kids calling out at them for simple needs in the middle of when they are talking to someone or teaching a lesson. This is where ASL in the classroom comes in.

Why would I bring it into my classroom?

Sign is a great tool to use with your students to communicate when you can’t verbally communicate. You can teach simple signs about water, toilet, yes, no, and even wait. These signs are super simple to learn, and easy to catch on to. These will help eliminate the times of day you will hear your name which yes will help your sanity but it also helps kids learn a second language without knowing it.

How do I bring it into my classroom?

There are many different resources you can use to first educate yourself and then secondly for you to use with your students. Once you have created a baseline of what signs you want in your classroom you can create resources for yourself and your class and set up a system that goes along with what you are wanting sign to be in your classroom. It can be a way to have your students excuse themselves to fill up their water bottle or go to the bathroom if you pair it with a way to track which students are in or out of the room. You do need to make sure that your students understand the system and know that you need to make eye contact and acknowledge their request to leave the room.

What resources are there?

Like I have said again and again on here Learn How to Sign has amazing resources and this time it is no different they once again have a great video that covers lots of signs. They have two different videos about signing in the classroom How to Use ASL in the Classroom and ASL Signs for Teachers to Use in the Classroom. Once you have figured out the ways you want to use sign in your classroom and what works best for you, you can pick the signs you want to use in your classroom. Once you pick the signs you want then you can create an anchor chart with the different signs that you have selected that you think will work for your classroom. This can serve as a reminder on what signs they can use to communicate with you when you might not be able to verbally communicate with you.

Now with the anchor chart you will need to set some rules around what this may look like. When they do get permission to either go get water or go to the bathroom they need to sign out so that you as the teacher can keep track of who is going in and out. This is just a sample I bought to give you an idea of what you might want on your own anchor sign.

You can also use a sign in/sign out chart so that you can keep track of who is coming and going.

What did I learn?

This week I am finally realizing how disconnected we truly are in conversations and how connected people using ASL are during conversations. You need to be 100% attentive when having a conversation in ASL because their tone is now their body language and their facial expression. So you can no longer have a conversation with someone while starring down at your phone you have to look up and connect. I truly think that ASL is a beautiful language and you learn how to be connected and attentive during a conversation.