In order for your students to do the following suggested activities, you first need to make your word wall more interactive and fun by adding American Sign Language signs to the words on your word wall. For information on how to do that, please visit the first part of this article entitled: “Make Your Word Wall Interactive and Fun: By Incorporating American Sign Language Signs”
Matching or Concentration – Have students match the sight word with its matching sign. To take this a step further, try a concentration game. Flip the words and sign photos over and see if they can find the ones that match.
Find It – Student work in pairs. One student shows the sign for a sight word and the other student finds the word. Or have one student say the word and the other student makes the sign for it (or find the sign photo for it).
Signing Sentences – Have students write a sentence using ONLY words from the word wall. Let them practice signing and saying the sentence. Have the students share their signing sentence to each other either in pairs or in front of the class.
Signing Songs – Make up a song to go along with a word from your word wall. Teach it to the students and sing and sign it together as a group. I have found the tune of Goodnight Ladies to be useful. Here’s an example that allows the students to find the word as well: “Let’s find ‘see’, Let’s find ‘see’, Let’s find ‘see’, I think I ‘see’ it now. Sign the word see and then allow the class or group to find the word see on the word wall.
Sign and Spell – If your students know the American Sign Language manual alphabet (or would like to practice learning it), have your students finger spell each word on your word wall and then sign the word. For example with the word see, student can say and sign “S” “E” “E”, See.
Fill in the Blanks - Leave blanks in the place of words in a pocket chart, morning message or sentence strips. Students can find the missing word on the word wall chart and then say and sign it in the sentence to make sure it makes sense. Children can continue to look on the word wall and see if they find any other words/signs that would make sense in the sentence.
Singing Stories – You can find many books that emphasize sight words. Choose one for the students to read and teach them the sign for the sight word that repeats in the story. Sign and say the word every time it appears in the text.
