Welcome to the Sign Of The Week.

At this stage, you probably know that I am a huge advocate for communications systems, such as sign language, right?

But I don´t want you to just take my word for it.

There is tons of research out there, and I want to share the results of one of these studies. Listen to this…

Did you know that when you use signs with instructions, children are 4 times more likely to respond?

Yes, 4 times more likely! This was the finding of a study done by Carbone et al (2006) with children with autism. This study showed that speech and signs training produced four times the number of responses of speech alone training. The researchers explained in the conclusions that one of the reasons for this may be because of the visual cues that signs provide.

Using signs in the classroom (or in our virtual sessions with students) help our students see as well as hear what is being communicated, therefore, it contributes to greater understanding, which, in turn, contributes to more cooperation and learning in the classroom.

So, this week, I want to teach you a sign that you can use when giving instructions to your students.

This sign is QUIET.

You can use the QUIET sign to get your student´s attention before starting an activity, when you explain the “rules of circle time”, or even to teach children to use a “quiet voice” instead of a loud voice in the classroom.

So, the sign of the week, starting on Monday the 25th of January is QUIET.