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Tips for Reading Fingerspelling

Tips for Reading Fingerspelling

By John Miller
Saturday, March 13, 2010

Many people talk to me about their frustrations with fingerspelling and want suggestions on how to improve their receptive skills when it comes to reading fingerspelling. My suggestions tend to follow a lot of the same rules that apply to teaching a child to read: Practice, practice, pratice...the more you work on reading other people's fingerspelling, the better you will get. Everyone's fingers are different so it is important to practice with many different partners in order to experience all the ...
Children love to cook!

Children love to cook!

By John Miller
Sunday, March 7, 2010

They just do! I often used cooking as a teaching tool the classroom. Once my students got the skills in place through our dramatic play (described earlier), we would do cooking activities in the classroom and invite others in to join us and taste our creations. While cooking, we would again use our digital camera to document the steps in the process. We would print off these photos later and have the students put them in order (sequencing) and add ...
Using Figurative Language with Sign

Using Figurative Language with Sign

By John Miller
Thursday, February 25, 2010

Many people have asked how to sign things that say one thing but mean something else. This happens a lot in the English Language! Some Examples: It's raining cats and dogs!, or You look really sharp today. Now as native users of the English language, we know that neither cats or dogs are falling from the skies .nor is the person in the second sentence looking rather pointed. These are concepts that people who are learning English as a ...
What Happened in School Today?

What Happened in School Today?

By John Miller
Sunday, January 24, 2010

How frustrating it must be as a parent to have your deaf child come home and have no idea what has just happened to them for the last seven hours. The child may do their best to communicate their day but many of them have JUST learned the vocabulary themselves and reproducing them once they get home for mom and dad is difficult to say the least. One idea that I used that was very successful was a daily journal ...
Dramatic Play

Dramatic Play

By John Miller
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Dramatic play is such an underrated way for children to learn. I had so much fun interacting with my preschool deaf children and watching how they would communicate through dramatic play. It opened the doors for so many teaching/learning opportunities. One of my favorites was making restaurant menus including all the plastic play food we had in our dramatic play kitchens and creating our own cafe. The pages would include a digital photo of the food along ...
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

By Jillian Winn
Thursday, December 24, 2009

From all of us at Signing Savvy, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! While we worked for several years developing the site before it went live; the beginning of 2010 marks the end of our first year of being live on the Internet and we are very grateful for the support of all of our users. We particularly are thankful for full members who allow us to continue to grow the site. In 2010, we ...
Signs, Signs, EVERYWHERE!

Signs, Signs, EVERYWHERE!

By John Miller
Friday, December 11, 2009

In many preschool or early childhood classes you walk into the room and you see the written words for different objects around the room everywhere. A chair has the word CHAIR on it, the cupboards are marked with the words PUZZLES, GAMES, PAINT etc... to indicate their contents, all in an effort to teach the children the written words for the different objects from their environment that they interact with everyday. To teach signs, do the same thing! You ...
Optional Ads for Members

Optional Ads for Members

By Jillian Winn
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Signing Savvy members now have the ability to turn off advertising if they wish. You can do so by changing the preference within your account settings.Learn more about the many premium members-only features on the about ...
Conceptually Correct Signs

Conceptually Correct Signs

By John Miller
Friday, November 13, 2009

Consider the following sentences: I won’t stand for this! You need to stand up please. This flag stands for freedom. In each of these statements the word STAND is used. It is spelled the exact same way, pronounced the exact same way, yet it has VERY different meanings in each of it’s uses above. Now one form of sign language, Signing Exact English, would tell you to sign the word STAND the same in all three sentences because of their 2 out of 3 ...
Our Features Explained in Video

Our Features Explained in Video

By Jillian Winn
Sunday, November 8, 2009

We try to make our many features as easy to understand and use as possible, BUT we know more explanation for some of our features is long overdue. We often get questions such as how do I create my own word list? How does the phrase builder work? How do I setup virtual flash cards and quizzes? How do I print multiple words on the same sheet of paper? To address this, we have made a series of screencast recordings! We ...