ASL takes over

This year I have been determined to incorporate ASL into my classroom daily.  The first step I took to do this was to use Power Teaching and instead of gestures, I use ASL.  I have only done this for my reading instruction so far.  I took the second step yesterday.  I found a great video of a teacher teaching students how to sign The Pledge of Allegiance.  So we are learning that now.  The end goal there is to record ourselves for the morning news.  WE are studying the words and talking about what they mean.  Because ASL is a conceptual language, not a literal one, the kids must understand the meaning of a word within the context of the sentence.  They have started to notice this because we will use the same sign for different words.  Overall, the kids love learning another language.

But I want this to go deeper.  I have to conduct an inquiry during the school year.  I have it narrowed down to two right now.  The first has to do with giving students choice to construct knowledge.  It's very similar to my inquiry from last year and to that of another teacher.  The second deals with how student's use of vocabulary broadens in the oral language and writing areas when they are using ASL.  I'm still working on the wording of this but it fascinates me, it's relavant to my current practice, and although I'm sure there have been studies on this, I have never studied it first hand.

My mini lessons have been going really well.  Even with sign and the turn/teach moments, which take longer than a turn and talk, I have gotten most of my mini lessons down to 10-13 minutes.  They were 20 at the very beginning.  I have done 11 so far and I have recorded 3 of them.  I really should be recording more.  I have send my videos to several teachers.  They are impressed but I haven't received any critique-type feedback which is what I'm really looking for.  It's very difficult to critique yourselve.  The only thing I've really noticed so far is that there are 1-3 students that need to sit closer to me so I can keep them focused.

My next step is to start really conferring with them during indepdent reading to research whether or not they are using the lessons.  I have noticed them using some more than others.  I beleive that after next week, when I do our project celebration week, I will a demonstration of their thinking.  Cross your fingers people!