Seasons & Weather in ASL

This week I learned how to sign the dif­fer­ent sea­sons in ASL: win­ter, spring, sum­mer, and fall. 

Right from the start of my jour­ney to learn Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage, I knew my learn­ing would be lim­it­ed and the like­li­hood of becom­ing flu­ent would be slim. Strate­gies such as sub­mers­ing myself in a deaf com­mu­ni­ty and sign­ing up for ASL class­es have been rec­om­mend­ed to me mul­ti­ple times by friends and fam­i­ly, but as a full-time uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent I know this is not a cur­rent real­i­ty. This free inquiry has grown into some­thing I did not antic­i­pate but do not regret; it has become a col­lec­tion of ideas, resources, and inspi­ra­tion for myself and those who desire to learn ASL but lack the abil­i­ty to ful­ly commit. 

Although know­ing how to sign the dif­fer­ent sea­sons may hold lit­tle val­ue for real-life inter­ac­tions and con­ver­sa­tions, this knowl­edge can be used to enhance stu­dents’ learn­ing in many dif­fer­ent ways! I envi­sion using this top­ic as a piece of a larg­er project, poten­tial­ly an “About Me in ASL” cross-cur­ric­u­lar project for stu­dents to work on through­out the year. Stu­dents can learn more about their favourite sea­son, and even dig deep­er and learn how to sign some of the words asso­ci­at­ed with that sea­son, such as “ski­ing” or “swim­ming”. Touch­ing light­ly on the dif­fer­ent sea­sons might serve as a moti­va­tor for stu­dents to take their learn­ing even further.

I think a fun way I could bring ASL into the class­room is by cre­at­ing a class Bin­go game. Before cre­at­ing the Bin­go cards, I would ask the class for some of the words they are famil­iar with in ASL, mak­ing sure that we are using signs that each stu­dent will be able to rec­og­nize. I would add in some of the basic words, let­ters, and phras­es we have cov­ered already. The stu­dents should be famil­iar with their let­ters at this point, so we could use those for the major­i­ty of the box­es and fill in the rest with basic phras­es such as “hel­lo”. As the year pro­gress­es and stu­dents add more sign lan­guage to their vocab­u­lary, the Bin­go cards can be updated!