Languages- Auslan

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2024, and welcome your input:

Amanda Oakley (Languages- Auslan) Amanda.Oakley2@education.vic.gov.au

Shar Stjerne (Languages- Auslan) Shar.Stjerne@education.vic.gov.au

 Term Two

This term our learning focus will be on Sports, Olympics and Hobbies. 

Foundation to Year Two

Foundation to Year Two students have been consolidating their learning about sporting signs and phrases to express their favourite sport, and what they can play.  This has required  the students to remember sporting signs and incorporate these into phrases using the specific signs 'favourite, can and like'.  Many students have also included signs such as 'have' to expand their signing phrase.

The Foundation students have been doing a great job of listening with their eyes. Several of them have also begun to fingerspell their whole name during roll call at the beginning of class. This demonstrates that their Auslan skills, and importantly, their confidence is growing when communicating with peers in Auslan.

This week, we began our learning about HOLM + NMF with the foundations.  HOLM stands for Handshape, Orientation, Location and Movement. Every sign in Auslan has a particular handshape, orientation, location and movement. NMF means Non Manual Features, this includes facial expression and body movements that provide deeper information about the sign and what is being communicated.  For example, the sign like/don't like, is the same but the NMF is different, thus allowing us to understand the meaning in context of what is being communicated.

The students discussed the flat handshape, hook, pointer and okay handshape. They traced their hand and created fish and turtles, using a flat handshape, as this the handshape for these signs. 

                Below, the Year One students are sharing their ideas on their favourite sports at the end of the lesson.

Year Two students sharing their favourite sports.

Year Two students went into more depth when discussing HOLM + NMF comparing signs and breaking them down into the HOLM categories. We will continue this exploration of Auslan linguistics over the remainder of the term across the Foundation to Year Two levels

Year Three and Four

The Three Four classes have been hard at work learning more about the Olympics and Deaflympics. We have started looking at the top 15 Countries of the Olympics and creating a display on our world map for the rest of the term. Here are the signs for you to help them remember them at home. 

Year Five and Six

The Five-Six students have been learning about the different types of world sports events. The Olympics, The Para Olympics, and The Deaflympics. They have continued creating our display board outside the room with a task focused on colours. 

We have also been watching some Auslan stories with no English subtitles or narration. This has challenged the students to use their Auslan skills to interpret the story. It was a great success to see students retell the story in pictures or by answering questions.

Auslan Day Thursday 29th August

We are looking forward to Auslan Day on Thursday 29th at school. All classes will be rotating to different learning experiences across the school incorporating Performing Arts, Sport, and Visual Art. Students will also be participating in lessons with Kerrie Taylor who is a Deaf teacher, mentor and author. We look forward to sharing some photos and stories about the day in the next newsletter.