What am I doing today, this week, this month? I get a lot of questions from people asking me this along with a plethora of other questions: How do you make ASL lesson plans? How do you keep kids engaged? How do you deal with the day-to-day? A year or two ago I would have answered these questions much differently than I do today. In my last post I talked about reflection for students to help in their learning process. Like students, teachers need time to reflect and process in order to make changes that will help make our students better learners and ourselves better teachers. Along with reflection, teachers need to have a willingness to change. After all, nothing changes if nothing changes.
We have to face the facts that there are not a lot of materials out there for ASL classes, not at the high school level. We have incomplete curriculum books to choose from and a full time job on top of our full time job creating materials to fill in the gaps. It is a circular rut we continue to face. I did it for 15+ years. If you are willing to change, I am here to help you get out of the rut. Let’s look at how we can spice up our ASL lesson plans.
Leave the textbook behind
I know this scares a lot of you. But the textbook should not be our guiding factor in teaching kids to communicate. Think back to when you were learning a language. Did signing to your textbook help you become better in communication? NO! Think about all the topics, subjects and things that you wanted to say that were meaningful to you but you couldn’t. You know why? You couldn’t find it in your textbook. It’s OK to use the book as a guide if you feel comfortable with it. But I encourage you to look at your students and the current year and ask if what you are teaching from the book is relevant to your students.
That leads me to my next point…
Relevance
Students learn best when they have a connection to the content. This is no different in a language class. Vocabulary and terms that mean nothing to students will be more difficult for them to use in everyday life situations. Buying a house, taking out a loan or making a budget aren’t generally hot topics for high school students. Or young college students for that matter. Find out what students’ interests are and create a unit around that. It’s OK to go rogue with your ASL lesson plans. I give you permission.
Next…
Interesting and Fun
Since you are already creating so much material for your class due to the lack of needed materials why not make it fun? Get students moving around by creating stations or post pictures around the room for conversation starters. Use games to keep student interest and break up the monotony. Here are some ideas for these activities to tie into a unit.
Happy creating…what will you do today?
