If you’re like most primary teachers, then you have a word wall. Your word wall has basic sight words and maybe even some content words. These words are posted for the children to use, which they rarely do unless you draw their attention to them. How can you make your word wall more interactive, eye-catching and fun, so that the students will use it more often? Add American Sign Language signs!
Research shows that when a sight word is introduced to a student along with its accompanying ASL sign, the students have greater recall of those words. In fact, in a study by Hoyer (1985) data was collected on ten 1st grade students who were having difficulty in retaining their sight word vocabulary. With regular instruction, these children retained an average of 69% of their sight words over a 14 week time period. With sign instruction, these struggling readers retained an average of 93%.
So if you make your word wall into an interactive, eye-catching and fun experience by adding ASL signs, your students are more likely to use it, refer to it, and more importantly remember and be able to read the words on it.
Here’s how:
Take a picture of one of your students making the sign for a word wall word. Print it and tape it to the word wall card. Take another students picture making a sign for another word. Print it, tape it on and re-post the word. Keep doing this until all of your students have had their photo taken and all of your word wall cards have the signs for those words attached. Your students will love looking at their picture and those of their fellow students. They will love learning the signs for each word (and the students who did the sign can even be the expert signer for that word – teaching their classmates and boosting their self-esteem).
- You can use your word wall for center time, sight word/content word practice and you’ll probably even see your students over at the word wall practicing their words and signs during free time.
- For signs, visit Michigan State University’s ASL Web Browser at: http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/
- For a quicker way, purchase "My First 50 Sight Words in Sign", found at: http://www.kimssigningsolutions.com/productsshop/sightwordcards.html
For further activity ideas to use your new word wall, visit my other article on BrightHub entitled: “Activities to Make Your Word Wall Interactive and Fun: By Incorporating American Sign Language Signs”
