Give Deaf Children in Argentina a First Textbook

We are proud to present you our news about Deaf Children's Textbook to learn Spanish as a Socond Language!

We finished now our first step, eager to join with our supporters our achievements.

We came up with this question:

              Why would we want to create specially designed educational material for deaf children?

The team working on this Project came to the following conclusions in order to have clear goals, which have to be shared by everyone.

• All the textbooks are written in a language that deaf children do not understand. The natural language of deaf children is Sign Language but in Argentina textbooks are written in Spanish.
• Deaf children start school at the age of six without understanding or speaking Spanish, a strange language that they must learn.
• Textbooks have to take into account that for deaf children the goal is not only to teach them the language but also to teach them it’s writing system.
• In order for deaf children to learn Spanish as a second Language they need to have educational materials base don Sign Language and on visual strategies.
• Teachers need to relay on techniques with the focus on teaching written language for everyday life: how to ask for directions, what are the best sales in different markets, how to use programs in the computer, etc. Teaching the Written language is not just teaching the letters of the alphabet or how to write sentences.
• Explanations in class are not enough. In order to learn, children need to read at home, practice and conceptualize.
• Textbooks give parents the opportunity to accompany their deaf children’s learning experience. 

Based on these principles, we already have designed the six units that will conform the textbook. Each unit has an average of fifteen different activities, which include two activities using ICT. The units are unified through a story about a group of children that go camping and every unit is centered on a specific scientific area: magnetism, winds, climate, bugs, etc. We are about to start illustrating the book. Meanwhile, we are presenting you some pictures that exemplify our work.

With great enthusiasm, we started working on the manual for teaching Spanish to deaf children through science. Our first action was to invite the participants of the interdisciplinary team that will be the developers of the activities, the illustrations and the videos to a meeting at the Canales’ headquarters.

The technical coordinator, Silvia Zgryzek, is a teacher of the deaf and a specialist in teaching Spanish as a second language. It is she who will lead the project and the one who convoked the first meeting attended by the ICT specialist, the illustrator and the video coordinator.

Each unit will include science topics that will be detached from a story. The story tells about a group of children who go camping and have to choose where they are going, the activities they are going to do, etc.

In unit 1, the topic is the weather and in the starting video, the children will introduce themselves and they will talk about their tastes and preferences about the places to go camping. A script will be made before filming the video in which the themes that will serve as triggers for the unit will be developed. The idea is that after watching the video the children will converse in sign language about what they like most, the mountain or the beach, if they have been worried about the weather, and so on.

The children want to go to different places: mountain, sea, beach, places with forests, with snow. There like many places but it depends on the weather. Some like snow, others prefer heat. Some places are nice but it is very cold at night. Also rain is a problem.

The activities will be diverse: join with arrows, answer questions, complete pictures, associate illustrations with texts, memory games, etc.

Each unit also incorporates a systematization section of what has been learned in Spanish. Activities will also be incorporated to use the technology.

In Manual 1 that was elaborated during 2017, the activities were related to art: painting, theater, mime, circus, photography.

We would like you to see some pictures that show the recording of the videos during the elaboration of the first manual and some of the illustrations and activities.

We keep moving forward thanks to your support!