Week 3: ASL Basics

Before I dive in to why and how ASL can be used in a classroom setting I decided to try and learn some of the basics for myself. This week I tried to learn the alphabet, numbers 1-10 and colours. I still don’t know all of these things from memory, but I have made lots of progress.

Alphabet

My first step to learning the alphabet was watching and following along with the Know Your ABC’s video on The ASL App. At first I had to play the video in slow motion to practice and get to know the letters, but eventually I was able to follow along at full speed and even remember some of the letters without having to watch the video! Once I had a bit of a grasp on the alphabet I decided I wanted to learn how to sign my name. To do this, I turned to the Marlee Signs App. Using the spelling feature on this app I followed along with a video to learn how to sign my name. Below I have attached a video of myself signing my name!

Numbers

The second thing I wanted to learn were numbers 1-10. To do this, I found a video from the Learn To Sign YouTube channel called Learn How To Sign Numbers. Initially I was only planning on learning to sign numbers 1-10, but I felt like I understood them fairly quickly so I continued up to 20. My biggest challenge in learning the numbers was remembering when you need to face your hand towards you and when you need to face it away from you but after lots of practice I think I have them down.

Colours

To learn some colours in ASL I once again used a video from the Learn To Sign YouTube channel. I found this video especially helpful because after you are showed the sign for a specific colour the spelling of the colour is also shown. This helped me practice my alphabet while learning the colours. I found it interesting that some of the signs for the colours use the first letter of the colour. For example, the sign for the colour blue is made by forming the letter B with your hand and then twisting/shaking your hand from the elbow.

Thanks for reading, come back to follow my progress!