SW as a bridge between hearing and deaf students

[Stefan Woehrmann]

Hi friends, -
just would like to share a nice experience-

Last Friday a group of hearing pupils 3rd grade visited our class. They
showed interest in how DEAF children communicate, learn, behave...
They stayed for 90 minutes !

While asking them for their names and age -  we learned that a written form
of a language is very important if you cannot communicate otherwise.;-)
The hearing children enjoyed watching us communicating in SL.

Then we involved (!) them into a small fun-oriented math-competition 1x1 -
just write only the results as fast as possible -
(Wow - you should know that my Deaf students can write these numbers with an
incredible speed) -
so no chance for the astonished hearing children - and they understood -
Deaf students are not stupid (smile)

Afterwards - within a 45 min sequence - we showed eight
GebaerdenSchrift-sentences to them - kind of repeated questions - ( Where is
the bike? Where is ...?) so that they only had to learn about 13 different
signs. Nevertheless - they did a brilliant job. After 45 minutes all of  the
hearing children who never ever before had had any contact with deaf
children or Sign language were able to read, sign and translate the printed
GebaerdenSchrift Document. My deaf students assisted as special instructors
and the hearing children shared their experience in German grammar - all
students wrote the translation of the GebaerdenSchrift- document in German

So in the end - SW again could be used as a wonderful bridge to reach out to
the unknown of the other respected culture!! I bet that the parents of the
hearing children will get the information that there is a written form for
SL - It is simply a fact and nobody wonders - smile!

Stefan;-))