Give Your Class the Gift of ASL
In my decades of experience in early childhood education, few strategies have been as transformative as integrating American Sign Language (ASL) into the classroom. ASL isn't just for the deaf community; it's a powerful tool that enhances hearing children's language, communication, literacy, social-emotional skills, and overall brain development from birth to elementary school.
In this blog, we will discuss,
Why ASL works
Integrating ASL into the Classroom
Getting Started
Why ASL? Ultimately, it brings the language alive! For the whole child, every child!
When professionals enter a child's world of learning, play, and imagination, the child blossoms with more confidence in exploring. And isn't that what we want for our children?
Using ASL to support crucial early learning skills builds a strong foundation for life-long learning. Research highlights that ASL enhances pre-literacy skills and helps build the bridge of communication with pre-verbal children. Plus, it is an effective intervention model for developing pre-literacy skills and supports multilanguage learners. What I love the most is that ASL is readily incorporated into all aspects of the classroom to support all learning domains – language, cognitive, motor, social, and emotional development. In addition, research suggests that using ASL to teach the alphabet and vocabulary during reading instruction is beneficial for all learners and stimulates and increases brain growth.
ASL has consistently proven its effectiveness in my classroom over the years. One moving example is a kindergartner with a significant articulation disorder. By teaching her just five ASL signs to express basic needs, we quickly saw improvement in her speech clarity, confidence, and engagement with learning. By the end of the year, she had acquired nearly 500 signs, significantly enhancing her ability to communicate and be understood.
Overall, the benefits of ASL, from expanding vocabulary to boosting self-esteem and improving phonemic awareness and spelling skills, make it an effective teaching strategy in early childhood. Beyond these academic advantages, ASL fosters positive adult-child relationships by facilitating more precise communication, thus creating a more supportive and inclusive learning environment.
Integrating ASL into Your Classroom
Integrating ASL into daily routines and curriculum activities enhances learning across all domains—language, cognitive, motor, social, and emotional development. It serves as a bridge between languages for multilanguage learners and enriches the learning experience for all children through its visual-tactile and kinesthetic nature. ASL is the most versatile strategy I've ever used in my classroom.
Here are five strategies for integrating ASL into your classroom:
1. Provide visual resources – Use visual resources such as flashcards, posters, and videos to help children learn and remember signs more quickly.
2. Incorporate ASL into activities – Incorporate ASL into activities such as storytelling, nursery rhymes, and songs to make them more engaging and memorable. Producing a positive emotion with learning boosts dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the "sticky" stuff in the brain that helps the building block of memory. Therefore, it enhances the retrieval of ASL vocabulary words.
3. Encourage language development through daily routines – Daily routines are essential for children learning ASL. The positive repetition and predictable routines support attention. Therefore, it allows the brain to build schemas and sense psychological safety. To integrate ASL into your daily routines, identify essential routines and support language development by teaching those keywords to support communication.
4. Incorporate multisensory learning—ASL is natural multisensory. You can incorporate ASL into your lessons by using fingerspelling, teaching key vocabulary words in ASL, and playing games, like matching signs with objects, to enhance children's learning. Studies have shown that movement enhances understanding. When we get the whole body involved, children's comprehension increases. ASL creates opportunities for children to move while engaging in the learning process.
5. Make it fun – Make learning ASL fun. Use games, puzzles, and other activities to motivate and engage children. Remember, producing a positive emotion with learning boosts dopamine in the brain. The more "sticky" stuff, the stronger the connection is in the neural pathway.
Getting Started
Whether new to ASL or looking to deepen your practice, incorporating ASL into your teaching toolkit can revolutionize your classroom dynamics. Visual resources, daily routines, and kinesthetic learning activities are just some ways to make ASL learning engaging and effective for young learners.
To support educators in implementing ASL effectively, Sprouting New Beginnings has developed a variety of resources for the classroom that teach practical ASL vocabulary and are supported by the scientific rationale behind using ASL with hearing children. Understanding the cognitive and developmental reasons behind using ASL equips educators to confidently explain and advocate for its integration with families and administrators. For lots of FREE stuff, join us on our Toolkit.
Ready to implement ASL in your classroom? We have over 50 ASL resources to support teachers in providing fun and engaging learning opportunities. Many of our resources are on Teachers Pay Teachers; many are under $10!
Always remember you inspire the future!
Jenning