Mathematics, ASL Edition ft. Learn How to Sign

I had a difficult time looking for a new tech tool that I could use for this blog post. I did not want to use and discuss another phone application since that is what I talked about for the past two blogs. That is why I decided to go to YouTube and searched for an ASL YouTube channel that I have not seen before. In my very first blog post for The Learning Project, I mentioned that I already have some knowledge on ASL, such as the alphabet, which I learned from my friends who are deaf and a couple YouTube channels. In my first blog post, I mentioned Bill Vicars’ and Jeremy Lee Stone’s YouTube channels, which are two creators that I recommend when learning ASL. Their videos are easy to follow and easy to comprehend, which makes learning ASL much easier.  

Since I am already familiar with Bill Vicars and Jeremy Lee Stone, I decided to look for a channel I have not heard of before. After a few minutes searching, I found a channel called Learn How to Sign.  

I will say again that Bill Vicars and Jeremy Lee Stone are two good online resources to learn ASL, but they also have their cons. What I like about Bill Vicars is that he has playlists for specific things. English idioms have their own playlist, as well as Numbers, Customer Service/Retail-Related ASL, and Animals. He also follows a curriculum and has playlists such as ASL 1, ASL 2, ASL 3, and ASL 4. What I do not like is that his videos are too long as they range from twenty minutes to an hour. On the other hand, Jeremy Lee Stone as short videos, but he does not have playlists for organization, so if you choose him as a tool for you ASL learning, you will have to search for a particular video on his channel. 

Learn How to Sign is like the perfect channel. They have short videos, and playlists to organize specific lessons. Ultimately, those were the reasons why I decided to talk about her in this post. 

Since I will be a future high school math teacher, I thought it would be fitting to learn about some math today. So, through Learn How to Sign, I learned how to sign three different things. Here are my highlights:

• Numbers
  • The first thing I learned was how to sign numbers. The first thing I was told was that when the number is by itself, like saying “I have 5 apples”, sign the numbers with your hand facing you. However, when the number is incorporated into something else, such as time, addresses, and money, sign the numbers with your hand facing out. This is an important distinction between the two.
  • When signing double numbers, such as 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99, sign the number for the single number twice, but bouncing it from left to right (inside to outside), or vice versa if you are left-handed.

• Time
  • I learned how to sign time. The person teaching you the signs explains why you sign them a certain way. For example, the signs for second/s, minute/s, and hour/s, resemble the movement of the second and minute hands on an analog clock. Another is for morning, noon, afternoon, night, and midnight. For these signs, your hands will resemble the movement of the sun in the sky, which I find cool. This is probably my favourite part of the math series.

• Age
  • The last thing I learned was how to sign age. I learned how to sign, “x years old” and “x months old”, with x being a number.