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ASL/Closed Captioning Available

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This presentation will focus on bringing together the visual language of American Sign Language (ASL) and dance education for young learners. The curriculum developed integrates movement, story and sign into lesson plans for preschool aged children. The idea of bringing these content areas together grew out of a necessity after having a hard of hearing daughter and navigating a new learning environment as a parent and dance educator. When she was about 15 months old we were accepted into a program through the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind in Colorado Springs called "The Shared Reading Program." We were connected with a deaf teacher and mentor, Cathy Noble-Hornsby who will also share her insight on this webinar. The "Shared Reading Program" allows families selected to work with a deaf teacher for 3 years. During the time together the deaf/HH child and their family learn ASL through books and stories. The more we learned, the more intersectionality became possible between the dance and ASL world. The webinar will highlight how the journey helped create the dance, story and sign curriculum. Outcome of the webinar include:

-overview of how the dance and ASL curriculum were developed including video clips of classes

-sharing from a deaf educator's perspective on teaching ASL through story to young children

-sharing the intersectionality of learning through dance movement and ASL at a young age

-sharing personal struggles and triumphs from a mother and dance educator perspective

-sharing themes for content areas that worked well with in the dance and ASL classes

-brief introduction to assessing learning

-brief discussion of why a collaborative teaching model can be successful for disabled and able-bodied children