2004-03-22 - 2:22 p.m.

Class Background Information:

1. class subject: expressions in American Sign Language and their parallel in English

2. 6-8 year old beginning ASL learners

3. Lesson is designed to teach children who already are proficient in English the facial expressions used in ASL to convey meaning parallel to English punctuation.

4. Students already have learned the numbers 1-10, the alphabet, and some signs in ASL.

5. After this lesson, students should be able to create simple sentences in ASL using any content words they learn. (i.e. after learning the sign for depressed, they could sign Are you depressed?; and You are depressed.

Focus of lesson:

1. The lesson will go over the facial and body expressions used to help convey meaning in the form of negatives, questions, statements, exclamations, and overall emphasis of the meaning of a word.

2. The first thing to remind students of will be the sign for UNDERSTAND. This way, students can tell the teacher that they do not understnad, and the teacher can ask the students if they understand.

Second, I would remind students of the alphabet by refering to the poster on the wall. After having students sign the alphabet with me and examining their hand shapes, we would have all completely necessary means to communicate.

3.I will teach the focus of the lesson by first teaching a few vocabulary words, including happy, sick, tired, fine, feel and o-k.

Second, we will make sentence by combining new vocabulary with the sign for me. Without attention to grammar at first, we will learn to sign "I am happy." Then, I will ask students if they can see a difference in my facial expression and sign the same signs three times.

The first time, I will sign it with very little facial expression, simply a small smile on my face. second, I will sign the sign with emphasis, meaning bigger and more pronounced, with a large smile on my face, and third i will use a question face and sign "you happy you"

I will give the students a minute to think about the sentences, sign them again, and ask if there was a difference. The class will take a vote on whether or not the three ways of signing it mean different things.

Then, I will put on the board three sentences in English "I am happy." ; "I am really happy!" ; and "Are you happy?" I will sign "ME HAPPY ME" with extra emphasis on happy and ask the students to pick out which sentence I have signed. Then I will sign "me happy me" with no added emphasis and a simple small smile, and again ask students to decide which sentence I have signed. Finally, I will sign "you happy you" with a question face and ask students to pick out the sentence I have signed.

After asking for and answering questions, we as a class will go over the signs for happy, sick, tired, fine, feel, how and o-k.

students will then be given directions both in english (written on the board) and in sign language. Each student will have to introduce himself to the class (my name A-M-Y) and tell the class how they feel that day (me feel sick me). Each student will be praised first, then corrected if completely necessary. Things like stumbling over the handshapes for the letters in their names will not be corrected as fingerspelling is something that only needs practive to be improved, and correction isn't really necessary.

4. Students will be taught other sentences that can be use in simple conversation, like "Hello, my name is... it is nicce to meet you." and will later be asked to compose a short dialogue with a partner to perform in front of the class using thier new knowledge of sentences. they will now know how to compose a question by using facial expression and thereofre can ask and answer questions effectively.

They would also be given English sentences and would be asked to change them to ASL sentences by changing any word order, or dropping words that ASL does not use. On exams, the teacher would be able to sign a short sentence in ASL and the students could then write down its meaning in english.

5. Providing comprehensible input and interaction in sign language is easier than in most languages. Sign Language uses a good number of signs that are rather intuitive, like the sign for me, (point to yourself) or the sign for your (use and open hand in the direction of the person you are referring to). IN addition, facial expression plays a key role, a shake of the head is the only thing needed to change a sentence from the positive to the negative. In order to make sure that this particular lesson is comprehensible, I simply need to check for understanding often, and be able to explain things in different ways, using fingerspelling if absolutely necessary, to get my point across.

6. Hands-on activities will include introducing oneself to the class and telling them how you feel, as well as repeating the signs that are learned with the instructor. Graphic organizers include a handout with illustrations of how to make all the handshapes for the latters of the alphabet, a word-search puzzle with those handshapes, the words and sentences written on the board, and a new vocabulary sheet that students can add to vocabulary journals.

7. This is the most difficult question to answer. Sign language has no written form, which means there is no purpose to students reading and writing "sign language". There is also no point in "speaking" because deaf people can't hear. The important thing here is that the signs are clear enough to be understood. There are some mistakes beginning students will make that should be corrected before they become habit, this includes mistaking the F handshape for the D handshape and a few others. However, overall, perection in forming the signs really will only come with practice, and forcing the students to do everything correctly will not ensure any kind of fluency, and takes away from aspects like facial expression, which needs a lot of attention.

8. Initially whole group instruction will be used to show the class handshapes and sign s and to provide the teacher with oppertunity to correct any mistakes. As students become more comfortable, they will do some individual work, like introducing themselves to the class, and as their receptive and expressive skills continue to improve, they will be paired or put in small lgroups to compose short conversations in sign.

9. Because sign language is such a visual language, the main technique to be utilized is a physical expression.

10. No technology would be used early on, however, there are some very good websites that act as dictionaries for ASL, and videotaping students signing and then letting them watch it so that they can see how they sign compared to classmates and the teacher are very useful ways of teaching students to sign.