American Sign Language 2A

About This Course

This is the first course of the second year American Sign Language courses and must be taken after the successful completion of the first year ASL courses. This course continues to focus on everyday communication in ASL by introducing students to the basic signs, techniques and culture. To help develop receptive skills without relying on lip movements of the signers, the signing videos will be all “voice off.” To develop expressive skills, students will continue to express their thoughts in signs within the given context in the lessons. Through the introduction to some of the higher ASL techniques such as classifiers and indexing, this second year courses is designed to helps students to develop an understanding that ASL is a visual language that delivers one’s ideas and thoughts using more than the individual signs. Students will be asked to use various media tools including online resources, online dictionaries, a web cam, and the web-based Video Notes tool in Brightspace in order to record their performance in assignment submissions throughout the course. Students will be producing their own signing videos to demonstrate their learning.

With the prerequisites of the first year courses, this course targets Novice-High Level of Michigan World Language Standards and Benchmarks.

ASL is a sign language that is different from Signed Exact English (SEE). Prerequisites: ASL 1A and ASL 1B

Course Objectives: Upon completing this course, students will be able to...

• Greet appropriately in ASL in everyday situations
• Initiate and maintain a short ASL conversation with socially appropriate manners
• Exchange information with more details in everyday situations
• Identify and explain the current social issues, the roles and perspectives of Deaf family members and the roles of local organizations
• Present thoughts and ideas in ASL in a visual presentation

Course Outline:

Unit 1: Weather – Various weather signs, temporal adverbs, and comparison techniques.

Unit 2: Shopping – ASL numbers 100-999, comparatives; superlatives, attention seeking, and HOW-question techniques.

Unit 3: Health – ASL honorifics, Classifiers, Listing; ordering techniques.

Mid-Term Exam

Unit 4: Relatives – ASL pluralization, present; absent referencing, and indexing techniques.

Unit 5: My Community – Telling hours; minutes, location of things, frequency, and noun; verb pairs.

Final Exam

Resources Included: Michigan Virtual provides students enrolled in this course a video submission tool within the Brightspace learning management system and access to Lifeprint.com online lesson resources.

Online lesson instruction and activities, opportunities to engage with a certified, online instructor and classmates, when appropriate, and online assessments to measure student performance of course objectives and readiness for subsequent academic pursuits.

Additional Costs: None

Scoring System: Michigan Virtual does not assign letter grades, grant credit for courses, nor issue transcripts or diplomas. A final score reported as a percentage of total points earned will be sent to students upon completion of a course. Your school mentor is also able to access this score within the Student Learning Portal. Schools may use this score for conversion to their own letter grading system.

Time Commitment: Semester sessions are 18-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1 or more hours per day in the course to be successful. Summer sessions are 10 weeks long: Students must be able to spend a minimum of 2 or more hours per day, or about 90 hours during the summer, for the student to be successful in any course. Trimester sessions are 12-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1.5 or more hours per day in the course to be successful.

Technology Requirements: Students will require a computer device with headphones, a microphone, webcam, up-to-date Chrome Web Browser, and access to YouTube. NOTE: Students are required to have access to a webcam or other means of submitting video recordings of their performance of American Sign Language as a primary component of their required assessments.

Ensure that your school or district network and device administrator whitelists online resources relevant to the course in which you are choosing to enroll. Ref., Michigan Virtual Course Whitelist

Please review the Michigan Virtual Technology Requirements.

Instructor Support System: For technical issues within your course, contact the Customer Care Center by email at CustomerCare@mivu.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Instructor Contact Expectations: Students can use email or the private message system within the Student Learning Portal to access highly qualified teachers when they need instructor assistance. Students will also receive feedback on their work inside the learning management system. The Instructor Info area of their course may describe additional communication options.

Academic Support Available: In addition to access to a highly qualified, Michigan certified teacher, students have access to academic videos and outside resources verified by Michigan Virtual. For technical issues within the course, students can contact the Michigan Virtual Customer Care by email at customercare@michiganvirtual.org or by phone at (888) 889-2840.

Required Assessment: Online assessments consist of formative and summative assessments represented by computer-graded multiple choice, instructor-graded writing assignments including hands-on projects, model building and other forms of authentic assessments, including recording your performance of sign language.

Technical Skills Needed: Basic technology skills necessary to locate and share information and files as well as interact with others in a Learning Management System (LMS), include the ability to:

• Download, edit, save, convert, and upload files
• Download and install software
• Use a messaging service similar to email
• Communicate with others in online discussion or message boards, following basic rules of netiquette
• Open attachments shared in messages
• Create, save, and submit files in commonly used word processing program formats and as a PDF
• Edit file share settings in cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
• Save a file as a .pdf
• Copy and paste and format text using your mouse, keyboard, or an html editor’s toolbar menu
• Insert images or links into a file or html editor
• Search for information within a document using Ctrl+F or Command+F keyboard shortcuts
• Work in multiple browser windows and tabs simultaneously
• Activate a microphone or webcam on your device, and record and upload or link audio and/or video files
• Use presentation and graphics programs
• Follow an online pacing guide or calendar of due dates
• Use spell-check, citation editors, and tools commonly provided in word processing tool menus
• Create and maintain usernames and passwords

Additional Information: None