Sign language

One thing I forgot to include in our Term 4 plans was that we are doing a New Zealand Sign Language course.

This is something new for us, although in the past Mulan and Miya have both, unschool style, played with signing and kinda learnt the alphabet.

The course, run through HASCA, is only four one-hour lessons over four weeks.  Quite clearly it is intended merely as a quick introduction.  I haven't heard if they are going to continue it more seriously afterwards, but it would be awesome if they did.

Well, we had our first lesson on Friday.  I counted 19 kids in the class, ranging from five to maybe about 15.  Most kids were around eight to ten, I guess.  At first it was said that us parents couldn't go in, and I was just saying goodbye to the girls when it seems there was a change of plans and we were invited to stay.  Awesome -- I think it is important that we know what is going on in the classroom so we can help the kids outside of the classroom.

The teacher is deaf and spoke to the class entirely in Sign Language.  She also had an interpreter speaking in English for us as she signed.  This, in itself, was a great experience for the kids.  And I think this alone made the lessons worthwhile.  The interpreter stood at the back, and it was emphasised that the kids look at the teacher and speak directly to her, not the interpreter.

In practice, the lesson really was a quick introduction to the idea of Sign Language.  It was not a proper first lesson to a new foreign/second language.

Over the course of one hour, the teacher presented about 50 signs.  This was the alphabet (a sign for each letter a to z), the numbers 0 to 10, and several greetings signs so that the kids could say hello, ask a person's name, say their own name, say happy to meet you, and say I don't know or don't understand.  That is a lot!

Obviously, it was done very fast.  And in a class of 19 students the teacher was unable to individually check the kids were getting it right.  I noticed many kids were mirroring the teacher rather than doing the correct hands, and many were struggling to hold their hands correctly.  Almost all went uncorrected.

I think I am right to say that neither Mulan nor Miya got any individual attention from the teacher for the entire lesson.  However she did pick out a couple of students who she helped several times -- both the youngest and the oldest children.

Nonetheless the teacher was confident and organised in the lesson.  She alternated smoothly between presenting the language and organising activities for language practice.  It looks like she has taught this many times before.

But realistically, it was too much, too quickly, and with too many students for it to count as a genuine foreign/second language lesson.  As I say, it was a fun taste, and a well done fun taste.  However, if it was to continue more long term I would expect it to be structured very differently.