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Learning Sign Language as a Foreign Language

Learning Sign Language as a Foreign Language

By John Miller
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Learning signing language as a foreign language is a very good option for hearing students. It greatly enhances their understanding of languages. It increases their ability to communicate in a variety of situations when a spoken language is not an option. And American Sign Language is the fourth most used language in the United States. We love the idea of a world where more and more people are able to more effectively communicate with our vibrant Deaf and Hard ...
Writing a great research paper

Writing a great research paper

By John Miller
Thursday, October 20, 2011

Challenge: Often times when a Deaf student is at the high school level, they have been using the language for so long that they are very fluent in it and great storytellers using their language, sign language, yet they still struggle with putting that great ability into a written form. This is where this next lesson idea can be a helpful tool. Activity: Research a topic, present findings in a video, then write a report Most students have times where they have ...
Link to Us

Link to Us

By Jillian Winn
Sunday, September 25, 2011

Want to link to Signing Savvy? If you think Signing Savvy is a great resource and want to recommend it to others, we would love for you to add a link to us on your website or blog! We've created the link to us page to help make it easy for you to add a link on your website to Signing Savvy by just copying and pasting the desired code into your site. We have provided our official description, buttons ...
A look at signing family members: The sign of the day theme from the last week

A look at signing family members: The sign of the day theme from the last week

By Jillian Winn
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

You may have noticed a theme across the signs of the day in the last week. We asked our Twitter followers for suggestions for the sign of the day and someone suggested we try week-long themes. Although we will not be using a theme every week for the sign of the day, we thought it was a great idea to start incorporating a theme occasionally. We choose family members for our first sign of the day theme, from Wednesday, September ...
Fostering communication between school and home at the middle school level

Fostering communication between school and home at the middle school level

By John Miller
Monday, September 19, 2011

This blog is part of a series of Teaching Tips for teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. However, many of the ideas would work well in ANY teaching situation where you are working with children and parents (families). The last article in this series was aimed at elementary education, now it is time to move on to the Middle School age students and continue our work on literacy skills. (Remember our goal is to improve reading, writing and ...
Update to Android Mobile App

Update to Android Mobile App

By Jillian Winn
Monday, September 12, 2011

We just updated the Signing Savvy Member App on Android to version 1.2. The new app resolves an issue that was making it difficult for some users to login to the app. The issue was that Android was auto-correcting what you typed as a password (thinking it was just regular text). The updated app no longer auto-corrects (changes what you type) on the password field. We also made a few additional bug fixes in the app. ...
Fostering communication between school and home at the elementary level

Fostering communication between school and home at the elementary level

By John Miller
Wednesday, September 7, 2011

This blog is part of a series of Teaching Tips for teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students. However, many of the ideas would work well in ANY teaching situation where you are working with children and parents (families). We will begin at the ground level with an elementary level suggestion for improving literacy and work our way up to other grade levels in later blogs. This suggestion works on the basis that children learn better when they are involved in ...
Fostering communication between school and home

Fostering communication between school and home

By John Miller
Saturday, August 27, 2011

Many people who have worked in the field of Deaf Education have had to deal with an alarming statistic that has plagued the field for a long time. The average reading level of the exiting or graduating deaf senior is that of a 4th grader. It has fluctuated over the years but for the most part it is still much lower than any of us would care to accept. I have heard many different explanations as to why this ...
Update to Mobile Apps

Update to Mobile Apps

By Jillian Winn
Saturday, August 6, 2011

There is a new version (v1.1) of the Signing Savvy Member App available now for Android devices. The new versions fixes several bugs that were in the initial release of the Android app (hopefully it greatly reduces the crashes)! The Android app also improves the interface layout if you are using an Android tablet, such as the Samsung Galaxy tab. UPDATE - There is also a new version (v1.2) of the Signing Savvy Member App available now for Apple iOS ...
Turn an Ordinary Children's Book into a Creative Sign Language Learning Tool

Turn an Ordinary Children's Book into a Creative Sign Language Learning Tool

By John Miller
Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Children's books are often great learning tools because they are visual, help build a child's vocabulary, and kids love them! I use them all the time in my teaching to young students. Now, with Signing Savvy and a bit of creativity, you can create a sign language version of your favorite children's books to further enhance their learning potential. Below is an example of a very well known children's classic that has been modified to show the signs. To create this book, ...