At Sprouting New Beginnings, we love using American Sign Language (ASL) in early childhood education. ASL is an outstanding teaching strategy for all early childhood educators, offering a multitude of benefits. It provides a meaningful and authentic way to support language development and early literacy skills in hearing children, exceptional children, and English language learners. It's truly a win-win!

ASL promotes phonological awareness, an essential pre-reading skill children develop from birth. Phonological awareness involves hearing and playing with the more minor sounds in words. Children are exposed to phonological awareness through nursery rhymes, Dr. Seuss stories, and songs. Incorporating ASL into these activities provides additional, authentic ways for children to engage with sounds, words, and letters. 

The brain seeks patterns in words. Besides playing with individual letter sounds, it's crucial to identify phonograms or word chunks, which helps in understanding predictable patterns using vowel sounds within words. Recognizing these patterns makes it easier for children to sound out words and become strong, independent, and confident readers.

Exposing children to plenty of language and word families supports their pre-reading skills. Provide child-led opportunities to play with language. Authentic play-based experiences allow children to use language patterns and enhance phonological awareness in dramatic play and other learning centers.  

Bringing words into your classroom environment naturally supports language development. Move away from teacher-led language activities like "Letter of the Week" and ask children about their interests. The brain connects and creates meaning through authentic experiences. Incorporating opportunities to hear and identify essential words through play, song, and ASL fosters a love of reading. Fingerspelling in ASL enhances students' ability to learn words by sight and improves retention and recall.

• Add environmental print to play-based learning centers.

• Label the classroom with pictures, words, and ASL vocabulary.

• Play with words and sounds using ASL and make it a game. Connect it to students' interests.

• Integrate reading and writing into classroom activities. Ask students what words they want to learn and create student-led word banks. Use various tools and colors, like sidewalk chalk.

• Encourage children to sound out essential words and support recall with fingerspelling.

• Read rhyming books, sing songs, and recite nursery rhymes.