British Sign Language: Student-led Continuing Professional Development - Kieran and Jenny

Two School of Education students have been running British Sign Language (BSL) classes for fellow students. Kieran and Jenny are equipping fellow students to teach deaf children and how to meet their needs in the classroom. By sharing this basic knowledge of BSL, they hope student teachers will feel confident in using it in the classroom.  

Background

Jenny’s brother was born deaf, so she feels strongly about raising awareness and believes it's important to pass on basic signing skills to future teachers. Jenny wanted those who attended the sessions to come away feeling they could communicate well with deaf children in their classrooms.

What's involved?

Jenny said "After starting with the finger spelling alphabet and numbers, we covered several topics: 

Family; colours; feelings; weather; time; every day signs; food; countries."

"The students learned something about how BSL has a different grammatical structure to English, and they practised how to ask and answer questions in this way.  They also learned signs that would be relevant in school."

Feeling festive

The class practised White Christmas in sign, which they filmed and put online to show off their achievement.  Jenny added "Learning to sign songs is something students can take on placement, even if they don't have a BSL user in the class."

Looking back

Talking about the sessions, Kieran said "The students definitely achieved what we hoped for. Some even asked for more opportunities to develop their BSL skills outside the classroom, which we weren't expecting."

As a result of the students taking their learning further, Kieran noticed a vast improvement in their signing.