Genres, characteristics, and related cultural aspects: repetition to create rhythm in ASL protest chants; imagery in ASL narratives to reflect the lives and experiences of the ASL community – for example, a rope in a keyhole to convey that there is someone at the door; handshape patterning in simple one-handshape ASL poems

• What are the features of carnivalesque discourse, and why did the ASL storyteller we are studying use a carnivalesque discourse form?
• How do you know if a story has been created by a member of the ASL community? What are some of the characteristics of ASL narrative?
• How might the set-up of a room help you predict what type of ASL genre is going to be featured in an event?

Teachers can encourage students to:

• use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast two different types of ASL genres;
• use a variety of teacher-recommended websites to find original ASL works created by ASL people that are examples of different types of ASL genres;
• identify the use of specific classifier handshapes as important characteristics of the ASL classifier story “The Flight” by Samuel Supalla.

ASL literary elements: characters; events; setting; plot; conflict; theme

ASL cultural elements: imagery and symbols – for example, the artist’s use of colour and contrast in their De’VIA works; the particular orientation of ASL actors and use of space in an ASL theatrical production

• Can you identify characters, events, and setting in a short ASL story? How do you know which elements are which?
• What do the interactions between the two characters in the ASL poem “Cow and Rooster” tell you about the themes of this poem?
• Can you name a familiar ASL literary work that incorporates ASL cultural traditions? What elements of the work helped you understand ASL identity?

Teachers can encourage students to:

• use graphic organizers, such as concept maps, to discuss the theme or plot of an ASL literary work;
• create an illustration depicting the main conflict in a short ASL story;
• deconstruct the ASL folklore “Timber”, and then explore the interconnectedness between ASL folklore and ASL culture.

Comprehension strategies: activating prior knowledge; questioning; breaking down the content of ASL literary works into lines; repeating the process of deciphering-deconstructing; previewing an ASL poem’s characteristics to make predictions

• What comprehension strategies can help you to ascertain the most important message in a short ASL news announcement?
• What questions can you ask to help you understand the meaning of an ASL story or ASL text?
• Samuel Thomas Greene is an important historical figure in Ontario’s ASL community. What do you know about him? How did his image in the video we’ve been studying support your understanding of the text? How is his tombstone significant?

Teachers can:

• use video clips to focus on specific movements of people and animals, and ask students to reflect on how these specific movements are employed in ASL classifiers;
• ask students to examine the first stanza of the ASL poem “Cow and Rooster”, and then ask them to predict what will happen in the following stanza based on their understanding of the poem’s structure;
• guide a discussion on the symbolism of the characters’ specific movements in “Cow and Rooster”. Students can identify the movements and their meaning, and then make connections among the social justice issues presented in this poem and in other ASL works that focus on these issues.

Comprehension strategies: identify high-frequency, familiar ASL words in order to begin to determine meaning in unfamiliar ASL texts; identify cognates to make connections between ASL words and words from other languages, such as French Sign Language; use context and knowledge of familiar ASL words and classifiers to infer the meaning of unfamiliar ASL words and classifiers; identify unfamiliar ASL words and substitute them with familiar ASL words

• When the ASL classifier is pluralized, how does the meaning of the ASL word for BICYCLE change?
• What mnemonic techniques would you use to recall newly learned ASL words?
• Why did the person use the ASL number system to indicate a hockey player in their ASL media work – for example, number 27 for Mark Couture?
• What decoding strategies did you use to understand unfamiliar ASL words in the video clip of the short story “Leaves”?
• How can knowledge of ASL sociolinguistic conventions, such as the existence of regional variations of the word BIRTHDAY, help provide information about an ASL person?

Teachers can encourage students to:

• research clothing from the Samuel Greene era to develop ASL vocabulary that enhances their comprehension of the Samuel Greene ASL video text;
• use their knowledge of ASL synonyms, such as ELEPHANT using the B handshape and ELEPHANT using the C handshape, to decode ASL parameters and to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar ASL words;
• identify noun-verb pairs such as CHAIR and SIT, and compare movement in each pair to determine meaning;
• use cueing systems as a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words in an ASL text;
• identify the classifier and depicting verb that describe the motion of a vehicle – for example, in an ASL sentence such as: