Signing Savvy for Libraries

In the past, we have shared holiday-themed signs around Thanksgiving (See our article: 10 signs to know for Thanksgiving), but we feel strongly that what’s more important than learning to sign a few signs like turkey and pie, is conversational signs.

If you check out the Sign of the Day each day, you will notice the Sign of the Day for Monday, November 20 is CONVERSATION (as in "talk to someone in sign language”) because this week is recognized as “Better Conversation Week.” Better Conversation Week is always the week of Thanksgiving and it is the perfect time of year for all of us to focus on having better conversations. 

Sometimes our deaf family and friends feel excluded when they come home for the holidays. If everyone isn’t signing, they may feel excluded and feel like they don’t have a place at the table. In honor of Better Conversation Week, in honor of Thanksgiving, and, most of all, in honor of our deaf family and friends, let’s try to sign. Signing is hard and it can be intimidating to sign with a fluent signer when you are feeling insecure about your signing skills, but the number one thing you can do is simply just TRY to sign.

To encourage and support everyone to sign this week, we have unlocked all of our member full example sentences for this week only. This is a member feature, but will be unlocked and freely accessible to everyone this week. 

Click on the “Sentences” tab on the Signing Savvy website to get started. We suggest looking at the section on “Conversational Sentences.” There are lots of great examples of how to sign full sentences. We hope that before you know it, you are feeling comfortable signing "How have you been?” and "It’s good to see you.”