Week 2 ASL-Introductions!

So far, things with my inquiry are going really well! I have been practicing my alphabet everyday, and I have even shown/taught some friends and my partner. I am pretty proud of how speedy I can do the alphabet now and usually do it while singing the song (I will put a video clip below). It is really nice, I truly look forward to the time block I set aside on Sundays to learn some new skills, and then practice them throughout the week. This week, we are onto introductions!

I think the alphabet is such a useful tool to have in my tool belt, and the next most important step to me is how to introduce myself in ASL as well as some greetings. To me, greetings and introductions are such an effective way for people to feel more comfortable around someone new, and I would like to be prepared to do that for anyone who his deaf that I come across. Not only do I want to learn how to introduce myself, but I would like to introduce myself as a teacher as if I am welcoming a deaf student into my classroom. So here we go for week 2!

This week, I learned how to introduce myself and do so much more! I learned helpful phrases and words (like ‘yes’ and ‘no’), and even started learning how to ask questions. I have noticed how many patterns there are in ASL phrases and the alphabet. For example, ‘water’ uses the letter ‘w’ and ‘restroom’ uses the letter ‘r’. So many signs are intuitive and have helpful tricks to remind me of what the sign looks like. In the video below, Victoria explains that the word ‘learn’ is like taking information from a book and bringing it to your forehead. Amazing! I didn’t quite get through the entire video (it is amazing how full my brain gets after only 5-10 minutes of learning new signs), but I am excited to finish it this week!

Lately I have been reflecting on how useful ASL can be in the classroom.I found the awesome video below tailored to using ASL int he classroom. I feel like this is such a useful place to start, and this teacher has so many more vlogs! A true gem of a resource if I ever saw one. One thing I have noticed is that when I spell my name J-A-M-I-E, when I sign ‘I’ I immediately want to sign ‘J’ (that is from all my alphabet practicing this week). I am going to start trying to spell different things in my downtime so I can begin feeling comfortable with spelling and using different letter combinations as I sign.

Well, I have a lot of new content to try out this week! This week I am going to start trying to extend from introductions and move into asking questions (I already have a bit of a start on this)! I do want to learn all the w’s and the best questions in everyday use. After all, one prof last semester told us that the average teacher asks 400 questions a day, so I better get to it!

Thank you for stopping by! Please feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Ms. J