I had a great time learning ASL this week and am excited to share the experience with you all. Although it was challenging to memorize it all, I was able to come up with a couple of tricks to help me remember them. 

I decided to start with the basics, the alphabet. The alphabet is an essential basic of any language, because that way if you don’t know a word then you can spell it out. I was able to memorize the first 5 letters of the alphabet easily as the hand signals look like the letters themselves. In order to ensure I was doing the proper signals, I watched a YouTube video and followed along. 

I also decided tolearn my numbers up to ten. The first five are simple and how I expected. Then you bring one finger down per number starting with the pinky, with a turning thumbs up for ten. 

https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/n/numbers.htm

Halfway through the week, I was feeling confident with my alphabet and numbers to ten, so I decided to learn these simple phrases. 

https://www.dummies.com/article/academics-the-arts/language-language-arts/learning-languages/american-sign-language/signing-for-dummies-cheat-sheet-208315/

I had a great time learning these basics this week and will continue to try and practice them daily! 

I have chosen to explore American sign language for my inquiry project. I have always loved learning about different languages. I love the immersive experience of learning about a culture through their own language. I tried to teach myself ASL when I was 6 years old, however, having a 6-year-olds attention span cut that pretty short. 

More than 70 million deaf people worldwide use sign language to communicate, but only half a million non-deaf people use sign language. By learning ASL and opening myself up to the deaf community I anticipate to learn more from the community than just the language, which I am very excited and curious about. At the end of the semester when I am able to look back at my learning process throughout this journey, I think it will teach me more about my learning style as well. 

 Having the ability to speak ASL could benefit a future classroom of mine in several ways. The first and most apparent benefit being the case that I get to work with a student whose first language is ASL. Secondly, I would have the opportunity to pass this skill on to my students. It would be a unique class experience as well as a helpful lifelong skill that I could teach my students. 

I am eager and enthusiastic