https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5 Katie Tremea en-us 2020-04-07 03:28:15 UTC 2026-02-22 00:34:09 UTC hello@padlet.com klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495991745     Traditional ASL teaching included standing in front of a board and teaching a word to word, ASL to English translation. Beyond that, grammatical structures and perfect "pronunciation" of the signs were emphasized. Little to no time was spent on Culture, communication, conversation, or connecting with the Deaf community. 
    Today, the structure of ASL teaching and instruction has changed completely. While grammar and "pronunciation" of signs are still important, they are not the main focus. The main focus is communication, understanding/comprehension, and experience and knowledge of the Deaf Community and Culture. 
    While emphasizing communication, students practice constructivism through "word-play" or "language-play." Similarly to a child learning a language (and similarly to Vygotsky's linguistic development theory) students learning a second language must have a chance to play with the words and phrases that they are using to be able to use them correctly. Beyond that, they must be able to play with the language to learn the grammatical structures of the language. 
    Next, while emphasizing understanding/comprehension, constructivism is seen through similar fashions to learning communication. Because receptive skills are generally the hardest to learn, I think it is important to put extra emphasis on comprehension/understanding of the language. An additional way for students to truly learn how to comprehend the language is through repetition of authentic sources, teacher "word-play" meaning that that the teacher dialogues a lot of what they are doing to the class whether the class is actually involved or not because it helps the students see language in action and in a real context, and lastly, through practiced communication with students. The best way that I like to think about practicing communication is having one student ask a question to another student and having the other student's answer be written down or finding other ways to show comprehension of what was discussed. One other way I have seen this is by drawing what was discussed rather than writing it. 
Lastly, constructivism can be applied to experience and knowledge of and with the Deaf Community and Culture through each person experiencing the community and Culture on their own. This could be done in a number of ways including service-learning, authentic learning, problem/project based learning, and inquiry based learning. Deaf Community and Culture is probably the easiest way of applying constructivism to the ASL classroom. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:30:10 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495991745 klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992217   You can learn about De'VIA (DE(af) VI(ew) A(rt)) easily through inquiry based learning. This could be done by giving students an option between finding art to answer a posed question, using art to come up with questions to then research, or even just giving students the prompt to learn what De'VIA is and to come up with questions on the way and record them with the answers that they find. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:31:08 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992217 klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992443 An example of an authentic activity would be for students to watch a poem that is performed in ASL and learn about poetry through watching that poem. The biggest goal in ASL (or any language) education is having all of what you teach be authentic. This means creating a Deaf Community within your hearing classroom, practicing Deaf Cultural norms, watching only videos that are meant for the entire Deaf community instead of specifically for students, and teaching with as little English in the classroom as possible. Attached is an article that addresses authentic learning in the ASL classroom. It also touches on why it is better for Deaf people (or people that are very close with the Deaf community) to teach ASL. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:31:36 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992443 klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992792     The last topic that I wanted to cover is technology. This is a big part of ASL learning. Whether it is through poetry videos, explanations of the Deaf community through articles, or just simply creating videos or blogs as a student, technology is useful in terms of constructivism. While there is not a lot of ways to use technology for ASL learning and communication, the few ways that are there for that purpose are very effective in teaching. ASL and language acquisition are generally constructive teaching a learning classes. If you actually want to be learning the language, you need to be doing this through constructivism. In the classroom, there is only so much that a teacher can do to show Deaf Culture and linguistics in way of examples and so technology is a fantastic way to bring in the authenticity that must be present in learning ASL. Below is a video of an ASL poem for representation of one technological resource that can be used to teach ASL. The part of the video that I like is from 5:24-8:26. This is an hour long poetry presentation and all of them are great but I think that this is one that would really attract student's attention. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:32:21 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495992792 klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495993032 This is one type of constructivism that you must be careful with in ASL classrooms. One of the most controversial topics in the Deaf community is the topic of cochlear implants and whether or not a Deaf person should get them. This would be one controversial topic that I would want to use but I would want each student to argue for both sides and create their own opinions on the topic. Another topic that could be discussed is whether students should be sent to public schools, Deaf schools, or Deaf residential schools. I would have three groups for this and students would take time to research and argue for all three sides and again, this allows the students to form their own opinions on the topic. The below article discusses a little bit about the cochlear implant controversy and could be one source for students to explore in their research. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:32:53 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495993032 klsteuart000 https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495993158 This is my favorite type of constructivism for any ASL class. I know that a lot of people have very similar experiences to mine, but I learned probably 85% of what I know about ASL and the Deaf community (including just communication using ASL) through "service" learning. The reason that I use quotations around service in service learning is because in ASL, it is less about actually serving and more about participating and experiencing the actual Deaf community and Culture from outside the classroom. While students CAN do service for this kind of learning, it is frequently frowned upon by the Deaf community because, to a lot of people, that "service" is a representation of a hearing person's attempt to pity or help the Deaf person and Deaf people are very proud of the fact that they are not disabled and do not need help. So, keeping that in mind, I plan to require students to participate in two Deaf events per term so that they can get out of the classroom and use the language in real life. ]]> 2020-04-07 03:33:10 UTC https://padlet.com/klsteuart000/rmfqkz3dlcw5/wish/495993158