Languages- Auslan

ngage 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 Four

Time, Seasons and Weather

Term Four brings exploration of signs related to the time such as days of the week, time markers; yesterday, tomorrow, today and now. In addition, across Foundation to Year 6, all students are learning signs to discuss the seasons and weather. 

Foundation

Seasons and Weather

The foundation students have continued to consolidate and extend upon their vocabulary about the seasons and weather. New signs introduced over the past few weeks have been about temperature and weather conditions. The students have been contributing to our whole school display in the corridor by matching a weather picture to a sign picture. 

In addition to the seasons, new signs include weather, hot, cold, warm, rain, wind, snow, lightning, sun, tornado and clouds. The students have been playing 'Fruit Salad' with the season signs and enjoying some learning outside.

They have been watching a series of  video stories about Birdie and his friend, Frog, as they manage varying weather events. With an Auslan interpreter and voice narration, they have been identifying signs that they know. See the links below for a couple of these stories.

Many of the Foundation students have been working hard to refine their fingerspelling skills with their name, and can fingerspell their whole name without a pictorial prompt. It is great to observe that those that are still practising, are using the wall charts and resources in their books to continue to practise which is a great strategy.

Year One and Two

Seasons and Weather

The Year One and Two students have been extending their vocabulary about the weather and learning the signs; rain, sun, wind, snow, lightning, tornado, clouds, cold, warm and hot in addition to the season signs. They have been matching sign pictures with weather pictures and the Year Twos in particular have been given some challenging matching tasks. It has been lovely to observe them assist each other during these activities.

In addition to learning about the weather and temperature signs, the Year 2 students have started some fingerspelling challenges. Each has a list of simple familiar words and in pairs or groups of three, they have been practising fingerspelling the words to each other. This builds and enables both receptive and expressive fingerspelling skills.

Years Three and Four

In the Three/Four classroom we have been working on our dates, days of the week, and months of the year. This has given us lots of fingerspelling practice and lots of opportunities to share special days with each other. We have been learning how to communicate with each other about different dates and how to work together to line up in our birth months whilst signing. 

Years Five and Six

In the Five/Six classes we have been building our weather sign knowledge as well as expanding our Australian capital cities and number signing skills. We have been putting this all together to be able to present a simple weather forecast that covers all the capital cities, the minimum and maximum temperatures, and the weather icon for that day.

Translating across the simple weather forecast, the five/six students have solidified stringing simple sentences together.

      We look forward to the final weeks of learning Auslan in 2024 and watching many of the skills come together after our first whole school year of Auslan.