Anne's Transcript ~ Sign Language I ~ 9th Grade

Anne fell in love with Sign Language in middle school. She took a year of Beginner's American Sign Language (ASL) at Elevate (a local homeschool co-op). None of those hours are reflected in this course, but that class did launch her love for signing. For her second year of ASL, we created our own program at home since we could not find a course for her to take in a group setting. She used YouTube as her main curriculum and forged ahead on her own. She focused on vocabulary and now has around 1,000 signs memorized.

She found that YouTube had a plentiful array of songs that had been translated into sign language. However, they were mostly translated into Pigeon Sign English (PSE), which is the most popular way for a deaf person to "listen" to a song. However, PSE does not follow the same syntax or grammar as ASL. The vocabulary is the same between the two forms of sign language. We decided that it would be acceptable for her to concentrate on songs, even if they were translated into PSE for this year, since she was focusing on vocabulary memorization and conversational comprehension.

She memorized 98 songs this year and performed each and every one of them. She maintained accurate speed with the song and was able to go back and perform whatever song I requested on her mid-term and final exams. She tends to sign even when she is talking and loves to quiz the rest of us on our rather poorer signing vocabulary.

 Here is a short list of some of the songs she learned this year.

• "Death of a Bachelor" ~ Panic at the Disco
• "The Adams Family" ~ theme song from TV show
• "Feel it  Still" ~ Portugal. The Man
• "Sarah Smiles" ~ Panic at the Disco
• "Hard Times" ~ Bob Dylan
• "Closer" ~ The Chainsmokers
• "If I Die Young" ~ Taylor Swift
• "Heathens" ~ 21 Pilots
•  "The Star Spangled Banner" ~ Francis Scott Key
• "Chasing Cars" ~ Snow Patrol
• "Victorious" ~ Panic at the Disco
• "Tear in My Heart" ~ 21 Pilots
• "The First Noel" ~ traditional Christmas song
• "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" ~ traditional Christmas song
• "Silent Night" ~ traditional Christmas song
• "Last Christmas" ~ Wham
• "Away in the Manger" ~ traditional Christmas song
• "Cancer" ~ My Chemical Romance
• "Amazing Grace" ~ John Newton
• "Emperor's New Clothes" ~ Panic at the Disco

She went for an interview at Elevate to see what level she should be placed in next year for ASL classes. The interview was held in ASL and Anne held her own. She was placed in level II for next year and will have the opportunity to increase her grammar and syntax use. She is currently considering a career as a sign language interpreter and researching how to combine her love of sign language with her love of dance. She would love to have a career in both.

She received an (A) 100% for this course with 144 hours of practice and performance of the songs recorded.

Disclaimer for those who wish to learn this way ~ To my knowledge, the songs above have no curse words. However, my daughter did have difficulty finding songs that were completely free of profanity, and so after she started running out of "clean" songs to learn, with my approval she learned many more songs that did have curse words in them. We do not use curse words in our home, and I knew she could be trusted not to use them outside of this course.

Blessings, Dawn