All About Me: The ASL Project
Well, we have officially made it to the end to my learning journey. Over the past few weeks I have collected lots of tools, strategies, and ideas for bringing ASL into my future classroom, and I wanted to finish it off with something big. Throughout my more recent posts, I’ve talked about ways to integrate mini ASL lessons into my regular class content; but this project is going to have more of an ASL-focused approach.
As a way to celebrate and demonstrate everything I have learned over the semester, I have created an American Sign Language-focused project I hope to use in my future classroom one day. Although ‘All About Me’ projects are usually a great thing to implement early on in the school year as a way to get to know your students, I would introduce this project to my class near the end of the year. I would do this because I want my students to have a little bit of background knowledge with ASL before taking on a big project like this. So, I would introduce this project to my class after they have had adequate time to learn, develop, and practice their ASL vocabulary. I’m anticipating this project to take 7–10 days to complete, giving students about an hour each day to work on it. Although this project could probably be completed in 3–5 days, I chose the longer timeline because I want my students to engage meaningfully with the content and work on building their vocabulary and confidence.
A Quick Reality Check
One aspect of this project I am really excited about is the opportunity it gives to implement some technology in the classroom. Before I get into it, I do feel inclined to acknowledge the probability of this project working in an actual class. As this is all hypothetical at the moment, some of the technology included in this project may seem unlikely for our local school districts — highly depending on budgets and resources. For now, I am simply an excited teacher-in-training with a really big idea- so I am planning this project exactly the way I want to. With that said and done, let’s get into it!
This first detail is probably what I am the most excited about. I am planning for the entirety of this project to be documented on Seesaw. I loved Seesaw the second I saw it and I am so excited to get to use it in a classroom. The most appealing aspect of this platform to me is how easy it is to upload and view content, as both a student and a teacher. I also think having the ability to share students’ learning with their families in such a straightforward and easy way is an amazing thing and should absolutely be taken advantage of. Each day of this project, the class will be given one hour to work on their assigned tasks. Depending on students’ individual progress, this time might be spent writing, researching, practicing ASL, ect. I expect students to work at their own pace for this project, and focus on creating something they are proud of. At the end of the working period, each student will upload either a photo, video, voice memo, or piece of writing to document the progress they made that day. As students send in their daily updates, they will be creating a digital collection of their learning on their individual Seesaw journals.
Step 1: About Me & Introduction to Seesaw
The first component of this project is based around literary and language. Students will be introduced to the project with an About Me worksheet that will later serve as a reference for their ASL research. The worksheet will require students to answer the following questions in point form:
- What is your name?
- How old are you?
- Where did you grow up?
- Do you have any siblings? How many? What are their names?
- Do you have any pets? What kind? What is your pet(s)’ name?
- What is your favourite thing to do? Why?
As my class works on filling out their worksheets, I would use this time to ensure each of the students are able to login to their own Seesaw accounts. When the worksheets are completed, I would run a Seesaw tutorial activity with the class — each student following along with their class iPad. I would make sure each student is comfortable with logging in, viewing their journals, and uploading media. When the class is comfortable using Seesaw, I would have each student upload an image of their About Me worksheets to their digital journals.
Step 2: Research & Practice
The second part of their project will require students to take their About Me worksheets and work on translating as much of it as they can into American Sign Language. For this part of the project, I would introduce my students to some of the resources I found during this Free Inquiry project. I would encourage my students to use the HandSpeak dictionary and The ASL App (which I would have downloaded onto the class iPads) to research some of their words.
Students can also use the provided resources to look up YouTube tutorials for specific words and phrases during their work block. At this time during the project, I would ask students to take a video of themselves signing the words they have learned and upload it to their journals. Their submissions to their Seesaw journals can also include pictures, reflections, drawings, notes, and anything else that helps them remember what they learned today. I would ask students who are at the research step of their project to upload videos of themselves answering the questions on their worksheets: fingerspelling their name, signing their age, fingerspelling the town they grew up in, ect.
Step 3: Putting it All Together
I expect Step 2 of this project to take a few days to complete. Students will spend their daily work periods researching and practicing the ASL translation of the answers they provided on their About Me worksheets. I want students to really take their time on this part and focus on adding these new words to their vocabulary. The goal here is for students to be able to communicate different aspects of themselves in American Sign Language without referring to a cheat sheet, so I expect and encourage students to take all the time they need for this part.
Step 3 of this project will be for students to put together everything they have learned into a series of video clips on their digital journals. At this point, their journals should have a collection of different types of media to represent their learning. This is the first portion of the project I will assess students on, grading students’ individual engagement and progress with the project. For the final component, I will add prompt questions as assignments for students to upload their corresponding video to as their answer. The questions assigned on Seesaw will be the same questions asked in students’ original About Me worksheets, only this time their responses will be in American Sign Language.
Alannah, this project is awesome! And totally doable! I do not think it is far-fetched at all and think it would be such an incredible way for students to showcase their learning with ASL. The video created would also serve as a resource for them to continue to practice their skills. Great to see how this all came together!