Sign Language Paired With Spoken Language For Early Education
My Inspiration
When my brother was born; he was born 3 months early. He always needed a bit of help when it came to hitting developmental milestones. The thing he struggled most with was language. Most children have an active vocabulary by the age 3 but my brother was still unable to say sentences and would only answer with one word. He was given a speech pathologist who would come to our house twice a week to work with both him and us. One of the tools we used so we could communicate with him was baby sign language that targeted keywords so that communication could go both ways. Now he’s seven and he speaks well and is no longer using signs much but it helped him communicate before he was able to speak for himself or before he understood what he was feeling and why, which in turn helped greatly with the emotional distress. So when asked to come up with a project that not only reflects what I have learned at Champlain but also something that is both personal and inspiring, creating a training and a simple and easy handbook that won’t overwhelm teachers who already have a lot on their plate sounded just up my alley.
My Work
For the last two years I have been working as a substitute teacher for an early education center. We had a program for preschoolers and toddlers. In that program a lot of the kids were special needs and some of them non verbal. I learned a lot of skills from the head teachers and one of the most important things I learned was the importance of site words and core boards and vocal language. How by combining these three you’re able to create a system of communication. High frequency sight words are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.
My project was centered on two things: to create a simple training program that would do two jobs. The first being giving teachers the skill and opportunity to learn basic sign language to use in the classroom to further both communication and language development and the second being not overwhelming and discouraging teachers from utilizing sign language with their students. The handbook is simple and not riddled with jargon. It is meant to be something to look at, learn and return to if need be. The handbook also includes printables that you are able to design how you see fit and place round your classroom for your students to have access to anytime they need. This guidebook and training are meant to reduce the stress of learning a language while simultaneously giving you the skills you need through the use of basic signs and key words. Key word sign is a method of communication where the primary or important words in a phrase are represented by hand signals at the same time as the spoken words.While speaking in English and holding a sign, we emphasize important information! Many of us already converse with our hands! Consider the hand movements you already employ to clarify your spoken phrases (pointing, waving, etc.). There are several languages that employ gestures to convey thoughts and emotions. Children frequently point and gesture, and there is a relationship between gesture and speech in the development of communication.
The development of language and sign language are inextricably intertwined, and sign language has many uses as children learn verbal language. The growth of a child’s gestures serves as proof of symbolic development and directs the developmentally appropriate intervention objectives. The handbook was meant to be as simplistic as possible because the goal isn’t for teachers to be fluent in sign language, the goal is for them to use hand signs to represent the main or key words in a sentence at the same time as the words are spoken. And in turn the students will recognize and pick up on what the teacher is saying.
With the use of the handbook teachers will gain the skill of a secondary communication with their students. Not only will it foster communication and language development/skills, it will also hopefully allow the students to not only understand the teacher better but also themselves and really key into recognizing and understanding their feelings.
