Let's All Sign!

                           

                                                              

Signing "Mom" - Madre!

This past week in our preschool, we were fortunate enough to have a new private hearing and vision testing company to come in and test our four year old’s vision and hearing.  It is a new form of computerized testing for both the eyes and ears.  The fascinating outcome was that some of the children that were tested, showed sight and hearing impairments.  We were all very surprised at the results of these children, but grateful for their finds.  The parents could now take their children in for further testing and work on correcting the problems.   It really opened up our eyes to what we would do to accommodate these children if there became a true disability.

 

In a recent article, “Let’s all sign”(Heller, 1998), two hearing impaired children were added to a mainstream preschool classroom and the teachers had to adapt their curriculum to accommodate them.  The teachers spent the summer learning sign language.  As the teachers’ proficiency grew, so did their appreciation of the fact that signing is an actual language (Heller, 1998).  The teachers from the first day of school introduced the children to signing as an accompaniment to speech (Heller, 1998). The teachers introduced signs throughout the day as they did their daily activities.  They encouraged the parents to be involved in learning sign language by sending home news letters, conferences and they learned from the children at home (Heller, 1998).  The teachers decided that they would try a two-year pilot program where their inclusive sign language curriculum would be documented and results published.  The study would include some of the three year old classes would use sign language along with their regular curriculum and the other classes would not use sign language. At the end of the two-year study, they found that when sign language was integrated in a naturalistic way into the general preschool curriculum, both the hearing impaired and the non-hearing children benefited (Heller, 1998).  Finally, the children who used signing were clearly superior in language development to those who had not. 

 

At my preschool we have found that incorporating sign language into the daily routine has become a wonderful addition to our curriculum.  As in the classroom featured in the article, our children have picked up on the daily signs and use them like it is second nature.  The parents are also kept informed through monthly classroom newsletters and from a monthly newsletter from my music class.  The music newsletter not only keeps them abreast with the signs that the children are learning the parents get a copy of the Spanish songs we are singing in class.  The children are really becoming tri-lingual by singing in Spanish, English and signing the words.  Parents will stop me in the hall to tell me how their child had been singing and signing  the latest song and how proud they were of them.  Some parents have become interested in learning more about signing and have gone to the local public library to check out sign language videos that they can watch and learn with their child.  

     

    Signing "Dad" - Padre!

With the recent hearing test results that we received with some of the children, it is now more important than ever to continue our program using sign language in the classroom.  This will allow all of the children no matter if they have a hearing impairment or not to participate and learn both the sign and spoken language.  It is gratifying to know that our school is on the cutting edge of a developmental curriculum that gives the children an opportunity to strengthen their vocabulary through daily activities in the classroom, through songs, by learning a foreign language and learning and using American Sign Language.  I am proud to be a part of making a difference in the lives of these young children.

                                                          

Heller, I. et.al.  (1998 January/February) Let’s all sign! Teaching Exceptional Children. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from the Teacher Reference Center Database.