Presenting

So far we have been reviewing our power point. We have also been asking teachers up front whether we can present in their class and we have been taking pictures of us signing and presenting to classes. The teachers we have asked so far are allowing us to present our power point to them . We are going to present in a class today and on Monday.

We have learned that talking to the teachers in person works better than emailing them and waiting for their response. We are now able to present in some classes.We have made great progress.

Unfortunately, the time that we had to present in  a class today interfered with my class time because I had to do this test and I’m wasn’t able to get out of my class. So my partner had to present without me. This was a challenge for us because we needed to have at least one us present to the class today. Luckily my partner was able to present to them.

Our next steps are to check whether both of us are able to get out of our classes on Monday to present. Hopefully we aren’t doing any tests in our classes that day. Once we have finished presenting in enough classes we are going to gather up all our pictures we have taken through out this year and we are going to input them into our slideshow. Once it is in the slideshow we are going to present it to our English class and explain what we accomplished in our project.

 

Searching…..

These past days we have been working on our presentation skills. We have been practicing to project our voice clearly and having more information in case of questions asked at the end of the presentation.

We learned that in order to not bore our audience we need to not talk towards the screen but face them more. We have also learned that it would be a good idea to sign a few words to them. Instead of just having our audience sit and hear us talk and talk, it would be better if we had them learn a few signs along the way. We could have them do hand movements and facial expressions that go with the signs.

Some challenges that we faced was that the teachers we emailed to, asking whether they would allow us to interrupt their class time in order to present our power point have not yet responded. Another thing is that if one of the teachers were to respond and let us come to class to present our power point on a certain date then we would need to talk to our own teaches and see if they would allow us to miss class time. A problem with this would be if our teacher does not let us then we would need to talk to the one who responded if we could do it on another day then he/she may not have a day cleared for us to present.

Our next steps would be to talk to teachers in person instead of email because they may be busy and didn’t  get to see our email. We will go and ask them in person during their office hours and explain to them what we are doing. We are hoping that once we talk to them in person that they might consider letting us do our power point. Talking to the teachers in person is a better and a faster way to get a response.

Deaf Culture Awareness

Just recently we presented as our first time. We presented in our Japanese class because we are learning about acts of kindness and respect. We thought it would be a good tie in to that subject because learning about one’s culture is an act of respect to that person.

We learned from how we delivered our presentation. One thing we learned is to speak louder to get our voice across the room. Another thing we learned to do is search up some background research to everything we will be talking about because there are many questions and we should be able to answer them.

A challenge we faced was finding a teacher that would allow us to present  in their classroom. We have only found two teachers that are willing to let us present.

Our next goal is to at least present in a couple more classes by the next three weeks.

Communication

These past few weeks we have been working on our education about deaf culture.We were able to get into contact with our mentor. She gave us some useful information on the second day we went to go meet her. The papers she gave us included the history on deaf culture, famous deaf people, worksheets to practice signing, the alphabet, and more useful papers. These are useful to us because we can put them to use if we want to add some more information into our power point presentation. Right now we are going to contact some teachers to see whether they’ll accept us to interrupt their class time to present our power point to them. What we have learned from meeting a teacher who educates students about ASL is that deaf people are impressive people because they can accomplish many great things. Some challenges we faced these past few weeks was the decision to which teachers we should ask to present in because we want to be able to have a variety of students in different grades. Our next steps are to await the teachers response and see which days they would us to come in, see if our power point needs any changes to catch our audience attention and research more of deaf culture.   

Image taken by us.

Reaching out to our Mentors

Lately we have been trying to reach out to our mentors. We have two mentors, one is our school counselor to help us with information that we will need, and Mrs. Draper, our school’s ASL teacher. Lately we have heard some feedback from our school counselor, and we have been getting information about the Deaf students in the Salinas Union High School District. We have learned that there is a Deaf student program at North High, and surprisingly there isn’t an ASL class. We are still trying to wrap our heads around that.

Some challenges that we are facing is finding some time to sit down and talk to Mrs. Draper because her office hour is Wednesday during lunch. We have gone but she was absent those three weeks we have attempted to talk. We have been emailing her and we are going to send her our What is Deaf Culture presentation to get feedback on what needs to be changed before we present it.

We finally met up with Mrs. Draper on Wednesday. We talked about our project and she was super excited to see how our project would turn out. To help give us more information, she gave us packets on finger spelling and signs. She also gave us a packet on inspirational and important people in the Deaf Culture.

Signs+for+i+love+you – Google Search.” Signs+for+i+love+you – Google Search. N.p., 14 Jan. 2014. Web. 29 Jan. 2016.

Deaf Language

Lately we have been finishing up the presentation. We are proud to say that it is finished and looking its best. There is plenty of great information about Deaf culture and History. We also included influencial people of Deaf history. We learned that many Deaf people fought for their rights because they weren’t seen as equals. All the research we have done not only is beneficial for our audience but for us too. We learn a lot as we go and I think it’s an amazing process.

We also have been working on ASL. We are learning how to fingerspell the alphabet. We are no pros, but we are improving. I got plenty of help from friends that are in ASL and a friend that is from a Deaf family. It was a great help  because we are so close to memorizing the alphabet and we are almost getting there with practice and determination. After that, are next goal is to learn how to introduce ourselves in ASL.

Image found: http://mind42.com/public/d3e40868-ddff-4216-aa56-1bcfcf6128f5

Deaf Culture

These past few days we having been working on our presentation. We have started finishing up our power point presentations.What we learned in the process of making this power point is that  American Sign Language, French sign language, British sign language, etc. are all different to one another. We also learned how deaf or hard of hearing people listen to their music.The challenges we faced were that we had to figure out how to put the information of deaf culture short so the audience wouldn’t get bored of it. It was also a bit of a challenge to figure out how to sort all the information in a way that it would flow smoothly as we talked about it.Our next step is to practice the presentation ahead of time before we actually present. Another step is to ask some teachers whether it will be okay to present them our power point to their class.

image found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language

 

Sign Language

1. We have been working on learning how to sign these past couple of days.
2. We learned that we have to be patient with trying to learn ASL and that you need to move your hands as smooth as possible when signing something. We have also learned that learning how to sign is not as easy as we thought it would be. It is actually quite hard as a beginner.
3. The challenges that we faced were that we need to sign correctly and know how to read sign language. Also that we have to do facial expressions with the signs which is sort of funny to do at first because when practicing the sign we aren’t really feeling that emotion, but we have to show it with the sign in order for the person to understand how we feel as we are signing it to them.
4. Are next steps for us is to learn more sign language so we can know how to communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing people properly.  Image found :  http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/signing-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html

Deaf Power !!!!

We have been working on a PowerPoint presentation. Our PowerPoint presentation is about what Deaf culture is and what it is Deaf/deaf people. In the process of doing the PowerPoint, we learned that deaf communities around the world view themselves as member to a cultural and linguistic group. Another thing is they not only consist of deaf or hard of hearing people in their community, they have family members, sign language interpreters, and people who work or socialize with the deaf community. We also learned that deaf people meet with each other at deaf clubs, events, sporting matches and conventions regularly.The challenges we faced were that we needed to find accurate and reliable sources in order to put the information we got into our PowerPoint presentation. Our next step is to review our PowerPoint and see whether it is good enough or if we need more information to present to our audience.                                                                                                                                                                       Image found at: https://www.pinterest.com/pilarstenger/deaf/