Student terp needs ideas for ASL 1 tutoring!

LeighASL

LeighASL

New Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2011
Messages
268
Reaction score
1
Since i'm almost finished with my degree and i'm interpreting for the school, the director of the program asked me for some of my work study to hold a tutoring session for the newbies! I've got a room with about 6 or 7 ASL 1 students and i'm at a bit of a loss of how to help them. We go over the vocabulary again, practice simple sentences, and i've even tried to do voice-off only, but they just don't have enough language yet to really get anything accomplished that way. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do or any fun ways of helping them learn in tutoring?
 
LeighASL said:
Since i'm almost finished with my degree and i'm interpreting for the school, the director of the program asked me for some of my work study to hold a tutoring session for the newbies! I've got a room with about 6 or 7 ASL 1 students and i'm at a bit of a loss of how to help them. We go over the vocabulary again, practice simple sentences, and i've even tried to do voice-off only, but they just don't have enough language yet to really get anything accomplished that way. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do or any fun ways of helping them learn in tutoring?
Click to expand...

Hi! I'm currently ASL 201, and my teacher for ASL 101 and 102 was voice-off Deaf. She would sometimes bring games to class so, if nothing else, we were practicing our E/R skills, combined with what little we did know at that point. We also did skits or dialogs from our workbook in front of the class. We were expected to already know fingerspelling, even if we weren't good at doing/reading it. But we weren't allowed to use it as a go-to answer. She made us do a lot of gesturing and pantomime, again, to build our E/R skills.

I feel like I learned a lot from her. Maybe something like that could be useful for you?

Good luck on your Tutoring!
 
I bought a board game called Sign It! and it's great. I used it while I was a tutor for a 7yr old. It comes with a book to double check proper hand placement & shape.
What I was doing for myself I was using the signs in ASL sentence structure.
I can't find the site I bought it from though sorry.
SignIt.jpg


I also play would play Voice Off UNO when I would go to some local deaf chats. It's great way to work on colors & numbers. My 13 yr old son approves that it's fun to play.
 
I hate that the board game is discontinued! Something like that would have been great.

I have a sign bingo game, and it uses the handshapes so the newer ones can get away with not being certain of the actual sign, but we've kinda worn that out.

We signed a play in my artistic interpreting class, and I remember it being a long, drawn-out experience. PatsCats, were yours shorter and easy in context?
 
LeighASL said:
...We signed a play in my artistic interpreting class, and I remember it being a long, drawn-out experience. PatsCats, were yours shorter and easy in context?
Click to expand...

The skits were based on conversations in my 1st level workbook, Signing Naturally, by Dawn Sign Press. Or the teacher would give us pieces of paper with a little bit of information on them. We would have to go around (voices off!!!!) and find out which classmate was our brother, or a postal carrier, had six dogs etc. Just fun stuff. We giggled a lot, but we learned a lot as well.
 
LeighASL said:
I hate that the board game is discontinued! Something like that would have been great.

I have a sign bingo game, and it uses the handshapes so the newer ones can get away with not being certain of the actual sign, but we've kinda worn that out.

We signed a play in my artistic interpreting class, and I remember it being a long, drawn-out experience. PatsCats, were yours shorter and easy in context?
Click to expand...

Go to adcohearing.com last time I checked they did have the signit game :D
 
PatsCats said:
The skits were based on conversations in my 1st level workbook, Signing Naturally, by Dawn Sign Press. Or the teacher would give us pieces of paper with a little bit of information on them. We would have to go around (voices off!!!!) and find out which classmate was our brother, or a postal carrier, had six dogs etc. Just fun stuff. We giggled a lot, but we learned a lot as well.
Click to expand...

Ah, we use those Signing Naturally workbooks. Most of those conversations are pretty dull and pointless though. The people actually had fun with those?
 
LeighASL said:
Ah, we use those Signing Naturally workbooks. Most of those conversations are pretty dull and pointless though. The people actually had fun with those?
Click to expand...

Everyone seemed to be having fun. Maybe it was just nervous laughter. :laugh2:

We also played Uno, Go Fish, etc.
 
The card games defintely sound like a good idea. I'm trying an outing next week where we all go out and eat lunch voice off. And then well have one interpreter to order for us.
 
Have everyone write a short biography and present it to the class in ASL. See if you can get any ASL dvds from the library and watch them on mute, no captions. Have people try to recognize the signs. Get handshape cards and come up as many sign as possible for each handshape.


At the bottom of this page are some game suggestions that you dont need to purchase anything for: Fun American Sign Language Game List
 
LeighASL said:
i've even tried to do voice-off only, but they just don't have enough language yet to really get anything accomplished that way.
Click to expand...
This is really the best way. I don't know how many signs they've learned by this point (thinking back to my ASL 1 class, we learned around 500 signs by the end of the quarter along with basic grammar), but it's probably the case where they know more than they realize. Challenge them to communicate as much as they can without using their voices. If you have a strict "no voices" rule then they'll have to stretch themselves and step outside of their comfort zone, but they'll likely be surprised what they can accomplish even with their limited knowledge.

Set some basic goals like learn another person's favorite color, what kind of pets they have, do they have any siblings, etc. Give them a worksheet and encourage them to learn at least three new things from each student in the class. Then have them take turns describing in sign what they learned from each person.

Those are sorts of things we used to do in my ASL 1 classes, and they were helpful.
 
Mountain Man said:
This is really the best way. I don't know how many signs they've learned by this point (thinking back to my ASL 1 class, we learned around 500 signs by the end of the quarter along with basic grammar), but it's probably the case where they know more than they realize. Challenge them to communicate as much as they can without using their voices. If you have a strict "no voices" rule then they'll have to stretch themselves and step outside of their comfort zone, but they'll likely be surprised what they can accomplish even with their limited knowledge.

Set some basic goals like learn another person's favorite color, what kind of pets they have, do they have any siblings, etc. Give them a worksheet and encourage them to learn at least three new things from each student in the class. Then have them take turns describing in sign what they learned from each person.

Those are sorts of things we used to do in my ASL 1 classes, and they were helpful.
Click to expand...

Those are really great suggestions :) Thank you! That worksheet sounds great!

I actually got my hands on a "Sign It" game today. Can't wait to use it next week!
 
Honestly - the best thing you can do for these students is ALWAYS be voice-off.
There is no reason to be using a voice EVER in an ASL class (past the initial hour of an ASL 101 class -with an interpreter there)

There are many very valid reasons for being Voice-off including one very important one that is rarely even explicitly mentioned - it puts the hearing students in the position of being the one struggling to communicate!

If the students don't know a sign for something they need to fingerspell it - or write it on a whiteboard so that the teacher can explain it to the class.

If the students can speak in class (even only occasionally) they are FAR less motivated to learn than if they know that they will HAVE to use ASL to communicate.Period.

I've never actually seen or heard of an ASL class anywhere that was anything other than Voice-off until I read it here on AD. There is no reason for it - and it defeats the purpose of an immersion learning environment (it's also VERY exclusionary to any Hoh/Deaf people present, be they teachers or students).



For vocabulary building etc activities, one that I've often played that is fun, as well as a good "education game" is very common ABC/Handshape game. Everyone should already be sitting in a circle (so everyone can see) - if for some odd reason they aren't have everyone move so that everyone can see each other.
Then have one person start the game by picking a sign that uses an "A" handshape and signing it, then the person to the right or left of them picks another "A" handshape to sign, then it the person next to them etc etc. This continues until no one can think up another "A" handshape sign, at which point they move on to "B", then "C" etc.

Variations including having the person Sign the Handshape Sign, fingerspell the Gloss English meaning, and then use the sign in a simple ASL sentence (Ex for "A" handshape" : sign GIRL, fs G-I-R-L, sentence MY SISTER she-has a BABY GIRL HOW-OLD 3).

Other neat exercises include:
Creating simple ABC/123 stories (a few sentences long total)

Bringing a number of pictures (odd pics, scenic pics etc) and have the students each take a picture, study it for a few mins and then describe it to the group (or split in groups of 2/3 each and describe it to their group)

One thing that might help you in terms of choosing activities, is to find out what SKILL they need to work on. Is is grammar, spacial usage (including describing locations etc), vocabulary etc ... and then find activities that are particularly suited to honing that skill.
 
Anij said:
Honestly - the best thing you can do for these students is ALWAYS be voice-off.
There is no reason to be using a voice EVER in an ASL class (past the initial hour of an ASL 101 class -with an interpreter there)

There are many very valid reasons for being Voice-off including one very important one that is rarely even explicitly mentioned - it puts the hearing students in the position of being the one struggling to communicate!

If the students don't know a sign for something they need to fingerspell it - or write it on a whiteboard so that the teacher can explain it to the class.

If the students can speak in class (even only occasionally) they are FAR less motivated to learn than if they know that they will HAVE to use ASL to communicate.Period.

I've never actually seen or heard of an ASL class anywhere that was anything other than Voice-off until I read it here on AD. There is no reason for it - and it defeats the purpose of an immersion learning environment (it's also VERY exclusionary to any Hoh/Deaf people present, be they teachers or students).



For vocabulary building etc activities, one that I've often played that is fun, as well as a good "education game" is very common ABC/Handshape game. Everyone should already be sitting in a circle (so everyone can see) - if for some odd reason they aren't have everyone move so that everyone can see each other.
Then have one person start the game by picking a sign that uses an "A" handshape and signing it, then the person to the right or left of them picks another "A" handshape to sign, then it the person next to them etc etc. This continues until no one can think up another "A" handshape sign, at which point they move on to "B", then "C" etc.

Variations including having the person Sign the Handshape Sign, fingerspell the Gloss English meaning, and then use the sign in a simple ASL sentence (Ex for "A" handshape" : sign GIRL, fs G-I-R-L, sentence MY SISTER she-has a BABY GIRL HOW-OLD 3).

Other neat exercises include:
Creating simple ABC/123 stories (a few sentences long total)

Bringing a number of pictures (odd pics, scenic pics etc) and have the students each take a picture, study it for a few mins and then describe it to the group (or split in groups of 2/3 each and describe it to their group)

One thing that might help you in terms of choosing activities, is to find out what SKILL they need to work on. Is is grammar, spacial usage (including describing locations etc), vocabulary etc ... and then find activities that are particularly suited to honing that skill.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the advice! I really appreciate your explaination of why we need to be voice-off only.

The exercises are very helpful. Especially the last one, where we're focusing on one certain skill. (I wish when I started I had someone focusing on my fingerspelling skill :P)

:ty:
 
I agree 100% about voice off in class... my ASL classes were all voice off andtaught by Deaf instructors. It was the BEST way to learn.
 
ASL Number Dice: 1 Pair | Products for Independent Living - MaxiAids.com

Or you could get the kindergarten color/shape/number cards- two sets, make identical pairs and send them on a hunt for their match- voice off... they leave their cards at their desk.

So that pick two circles must find pink two circles- but possibility more challenging, jack and jill story card must find jack and jill story card.

Old Maid Perfect Pairs Braille Card Game | Card Games - MaxiAids.com

Sign-O ASL Bing-O Game for the Deaf on CD-Rom | Products for Independent Living - MaxiAids.com

Is this the BINGO you are using?

Sorry its all Maxi-aids that's where I went for good braille UNO cards
 
Back
Top