DRUM ROLL PLEASE......

Hi guys,

So as promised here is my O' Canada ASL interpretation. I don't think it's by any means a perfect translation; I'm NOT a formal interpreter. But based on my knowledge of grammar and the signs I already knew and had to learn, this is a pretty accurate portrayal of our great National Anthem.

As I mentioned in my last post,  I hope to be able to teach this to my students in my next block as well as starting up an ASL club at my school, so I will keep you posted on that! Anyway, without further ado:





Finally, I wanted to also post all the sources from which I got the song, signs, etc. Here they are:
Song: O Canada!
Inspiration: O Canada learning how to sign with Jaclyn Paul
Other signs: Signing Savvy


P.S. Over the next few weeks, I will be working diligently to finish and upload Breakaway as my course work is slowing down a bit. I also have March Break next week, so hopefully I'll get lots done then. Thanks for sticking with me on this journey! :)

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES!

Hi everyone,

I am really sorry it has been a while since my last post. This last week has been crazy to say the least. I found out my new placement school for Block 2, had my first observation day for placement, as well as had no wifi for the last few days. So needless to say, I haven't really had time to work on anything especially anything on the internet.

But I do have a few exciting updates for you all: First of all, I have officially finished translating, learning, and practicing O' Canada in ASL and hope to have my video posted by the end of this weekend, now that I have internet again. I also had a chance to teach it to one of my roommates, so I am pretty proud.

Second of all, my new placement school is super into tech in the classroom. So that means I will be getting LOTS of opportunities to use the SMART board as well as other education technology in the classroom. I also talked to my Associate Teacher about starting up a sign language club at the school. She thought it was a great idea and said all I need to do is run it by the Principal. I hope to start that up as soon as Block begins (March 29th) and also hope to get some of the other Teacher Candidates at my school on board as well. So I will really be putting my knowledge to the test (wish me luck!). I also mentioned to her that I had recently learned how to sign O' Canada in ASL and she thought it would be a great thing to teach the students for Canada's 150th Birthday celebration assembly they will be having later in the year. So I will be most likely be teaching that to my students as well. Words cannot describe how excited I am for this Block to start! :)

Finally, I attended an AMAZING workshop at the DSBN Academy and iHub this morning. It was an Intro to Coding workshop to show different ways to incorporate education technology and coding into the classroom. I learned so much in those three hours and I am really excited to try and implement some of the tools and strategies I saw today into my class! Best of all the workshop was completely FREE!! Anyway since I am not sharing an ASL video with you today, I thought it would be good to show you some of the cool stuff I saw at the workshop today:

Slight change in your Regularly Scheduled Programs

Hi again, 

Hope you've all had a good week. I know mine was good, but a little bit crazy as well. Not so much crazy in terms of assignments, but crazy in terms of lots of other life things. I haven't really had a chance to work on my genius hour as much as I'd hoped this week. So it pains me to say but I have made a difficult decision in terms of my song choices. I have decided to only do two of the songs I originally planned (Sorry Ed, you've been cut). Ultimately, I think this is best for my schedule and the overall project. I want to give the other two songs the attention they deserve and not rush them or make them sloppy. 

Therefore, I will only be doing Breakaway and O' Canada and will be working diligently to finish translating and practicing over the next few weeks. By cutting the one song, I hope to have a better and more polished product in the end. Sorry for those of you who were excited to see the Ed Sheeran song in ASL. 

I do have some good news though. I was able to find an ASL interpretation of the new single by Sheeran. Not surprising, because of his popularity and beautiful lyrics. Anyway, here is one of my favourite videos I was able to find, which is representative of how I would've signed it (just at first glance). The sound was removed from the video, but you can see her mouthing the lyrics as she signs. So you can figure out where she is in the song based on that. Sorry again, but I hope you enjoy this version...

Pauline Lopez. (January 21, 2017). Castle On The Hill by Ed Sheeran (Sign Language). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8vnwinoxak

Just Keep Signing....

Hello friends,

So this week I've been pretty busy with school and other things. However I have also been working hard on getting at least one of the three songs done. I officially finished and translated (to the best of my abilities) Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson.

Let me tell you I am pretty excited for this one. A lot of the signs are very fluid and fit really well together, so I am excited to see how this looks in the end. My next steps are to work on the song verse by verse (or chorus) to really get all the signs memorized. I have the first verse almost done and some of the chorus now. So by next week I hope to have O' Canada all translated for you guys as well. Here are some ROUGH videos of me practicing... so you can get a idea for some of the signs. These are by NO MEANS perfect, in fact I hope to polish them up A LOT in the next few weeks.

Hope you enjoyed that little sneak peak ;) Next week hopefully there will be some more to see. Bye for now!

By George I think I've got it!

Hi again friends,

So as promised, I have finally have my three songs narrowed down. Obviously as the weeks go by these MAY change depending on how hard I find it takes to sign them in comparison to the speed of the song. But I am confident that the ones I've chosen should work out well. So my song choices are DRUM ROLL..........

1. Breakaway (by Kelly Clarkson)
2. Castle on the Hill (by Ed Sheeran)
3. O' Canada

I was looking at the lyrics of these songs and find that the signs are easy to do, really cool to watch ,and they flow well with the song... so I'm excited to see how they play out. Here is some of my work thus far... some Popplet's looking at the different Signs I'll need to learn, and the lyrics laid out and the translations underneath them.

So far this is all I have so far. I'm hoping by next week to have the majority of the first song fully translated. I am also going to practice by recording myself to see how it looks and how my timing is.

That's all for now!

Genius Hour Progress

Hello,

So a week has went by and I told you I would keep you updated with my progress on my Passion Project/Genius Hour. To be totally honest, I have been kind of sick this week so I have't really had a chance to work on it a lot this week. I have however narrowed down a few songs to do myself. I also got my ASL dictionary out and ready to go...

Bailey, C. S., & Dolby, K. (2002). The Canadian Dictionary of ASL. Edmonton, Alta., Canada: University of Alberta Press.

So as promised, I will update you with my ideas for the project. My original idea to do three songs is still my goal, with one song to use in my future classroom and two to do just for fun. My ideas for my song to use in my future classroom are O' Canada and Love in Any Language. The first choice (O' Canada) is a very obvious choice for the classroom, since it is something the students hear every single day. But by adding sign to it, makes it more engaging and hands-on for students. The other song (Love in Any Language) was a song I actually remember learning in my elementary school years, in fact my music teacher not only taught us the lyrics but the signs to go with it. Either of these two songs would be ones I definitely want to use in my own classroom someday.

As for my choice songs, I am really trying to do songs I have not seen already done before or a lot. I've determined the best way to do this, is to either pick really old songs or ones that have been newly released. I am thinking about doing one old and one new song. Here are a few I am thinking of playing around with: Breakaway, Castle on the Hill, I'll be There for You, Lost Boy, Roar, and Scars to Your Beautiful. As you can probably tell these songs are slower, which was one of my main criteria when thinking of songs, because signing at rapid speed is not my forte yet. Another criteria was the specific words and lyrics used in the song. Based on these criteria these songs seemed to fit those.

My goals for this upcoming week is to look at the lyrics of the songs and compare them to the signs I'll have to use and actually narrow it down to three songs. By my next post I'll hopefully have my songs chosen and maybe the chorus of at least one figured out. Wish me luck!

My Genius Hour Project

Hello,

Welcome to the Genius Hour section of my Blog. As I mentioned in a previous post I will be partaking in a Genius Hour of my own in my Tech class for Teacher's college. For those of you who don't know Genius Hour (specifically in classrooms) is essentially dedicating an hour of class time each week to work on a project, question, or idea that a student is passionate about. For example, if you are interested in baking, you could do a genius hour dedicated to finding recipes to make on your own each week. If you need more information on Genius hours and passion projects please see my previous post (on my home page).

This post is going to tell you about my Genius Hour Project. I am looking into doing American Sign Language (ASL) song interpretations. This is something I have really wanted to try myself but never found the time. So I figured when is a better chance to learn? Before I go any further, let me show you a few of my favourite ASL interpretations:



Hello - Adele ASL Interpretation from Molly Lou Bartholomew on Vimeo.



Allie ASL. (Oct 12, 2013). Brave (Sara Bareilles) ASL. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2j3xBdn  


As you can see, it is very entrancing to watch. I personally couldn't imagine a better way to showcase this BEAUTIFUL language, than by song. So I knew this would be the PERFECT passion project for me. I could even integrate it into my future classroom someday by teaching my students a song or two. Now that you've heard about my inspiration and motivation for my Genius Hour project, it is time to get down to the logistics of it all.

I plan to work on this project throughout the next 9 weeks (until approximately March 25th), which is right before my next Teaching Block starts. Over these 9 weeks I hope to be able to interpret and record my self doing a total of 3 songs (2 of my choice, and 1 to use in the classroom). Through this blog I will be updating you with my progress and process as I move through creating these videos. I will also come up with a general schedule for when I want certain things done by (eg. chorus interpreted by end of the week) I will also post the videos on my YouTube channel and embed it in future blog posts for you to see.


That is all I have for you for now. By my next blog post I hope to have a more detailed timeline as well as a checklists of tasks to accomplish my goals. To see more about my Project proposal please see my "Genius Hour Proposal Pitch" page.