I love teaching sign language to kids because kids are expressive with their hands already, so they take quickly to the concepts. Teaching ASL also gets kids up and moving, makes them more aware of their own body language and facial expressions, and unites them as an ally to the hard-of-hearing culture. Take a look at these fun ways to engage your students in ASL!
1. Use Sign Language as A Warm Up Every Morning
Change your warm-up for a couple of weeks to learning one or two of these top 25 ASL signs daily. Students can learn and practice in pairs or on their own.
Learn more: Learn How to Sign
2. Write A Play in Sign Language
Have your students watch this video about how to write a script. Then set them into groups to write a short play. Provide them with a series of signs to use and have them include those signs into their script, and enjoy the shows!
Learn more: My Learning Guru
If your students have access to a smartphone, creating Boomerangs of themselves doing certain signs and sharing them with their friends is a great way to make ASL fun.
Learn more: Freeway Social
4. Create an ASL Choreography of Popular Song Choruses
YouTube has hundreds of music videos created by the Hard of Hearing Community. Have students select one song and spend a little time every day for a week learning the chorus in ASL for an ultimate performance!
5. Emojis to Demonstrate ASL Facial Expressions
This site provides information about important ASL facial expressions. Have students create a list of statements with an emoji for each one that would match an ASL signer’s expressions. Discuss whether the emoji chosen was appropriate and why.
6. Brainstorm Ways Students Already Use Sign Language Daily
Teach students how much they already use signs by having them work in groups or individually to come up with at least three ASL signs we already use regularly in our culture (think waving, snapping, or a thumb’s up).
Learn more: ASL Hawaii
This artist has created an ASL alphabet with doodles playing on the hands making signs. Have students check out the list, choose one letter, and try to draw different doodles around the shape that makes sense. Then collect them all and hang them up around the room!
8. ASL Sentence Structure Puzzles
Teach ASL sentence structure by providing images of signs on cards to them. Then, …….
Source: https://www.teachingexpertise.com/classroom-ideas/teach-sign-language/