Learning vocabulary and aspects of Deaf culture 

The students will learn the vocabulary for items of food and how to converse in NZSL when eating and drinking. 

Teaching activities   

Flashcards 

Make flashcards by enlarging the illustrations on Worksheet 9.1. 

Play Clip 9.1, which introduces the vocabulary for some food items. Show the flashcards to test the students’ ability to recall the signs in NZSL. Can they sign the word when they see the picture? Play clip 9.1 several more times with the students watching the presenters and practising their signing. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Worksheet 9.1: Breakfast foods (.pdf). 

Matching task 

Hand out copies of Worksheet 9.2 for the students to complete. 

If you have access to devices, challenge the students to use the NZSL Online Dictionary to complete their matches. 

Ask them to check their matches against those of another student or several other students. Did they get the same results? This checking should encourage some discussion, especially if some students have matched items differently from others. 

Play clip 9.1 and pause the video often so that the students have time to check their matches. Use Checksheet 9.2 for them to correct their matches. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download:  

• Worksheet 9.2: Matching task – Breakfast foods (.pdf) 
• Checksheet 9.2: Answer sheet (.pdf) 

Cultural aspects of food 

There are cultural aspects to food that will interest your students. For hearing people, talking when your mouth is full is considered rude. Deaf people can still sign when they have food in their mouths! 

They are also skilled at not needing to look at their food for very long while they eat. Conversing in NZSL at the dining table can be hazardous – you can knock over glasses and spill drinks. You learn quickly to place cups and glasses in the middle of the table, rather than near the edge. 

At barbecues or other places where you stand to eat, Deaf people have the skills to hold their food or drink and still converse in NZSL. You modify your signing style to use only one hand, even when fingerspelling. 

Sometimes, you use the hand that is holding the food or drink for signing. At other times, you may hand your drink or food over to the viewer to hold for you while you use both hands to sign something quickly or to express more complex ideas. 

People who are new to signing may feel more comfortable placing their food or drink on a table in order to sign with their hands free. 

Practising what you've learned 

Place some food and drink in cups and on plates (or paper serviettes) on some desks. Seat the students in groups around them. 

Have the students interact with each other about their food preferences as they eat and drink. They will not be skillful in conversing while eating and drinking, but this experience will alert them to some culture norms that Deaf people demonstrate in their daily lives. 

Expressing preferences  

The students will consolidate their knowledge of the vocabulary and sentence patterns as they learn to express preferences. 

Teaching activities   

Make sets of dominoes and/or memory cards using the template provided in Worksheet 9.3. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Worksheet 9.3: Domino and memory card master (.pdf). 

How to play dominoes 

To play dominoes, the students work in pairs or small groups. One student deals out the cards. They take turns to match the cards end to end. The winner is the first person who has no cards remaining. 

How to carry out the memory task 

For the memory task, the students, working in groups, place the cards face down on a table or desk with the words in one group and the sign illustrations in another. One after the other, they turn over two cards, one from the word group and the other from the sign group. They place these face up so that everyone can see them. If they make a pair, they put these cards to one side and have another turn. If the cards do not make a pair, they place the cards face down in their original positions. 

If you think they are ready, add the rule that the student turning over the illustration card must sign the name in NZSL as they do so. If they can’t, the turn passes to the next student. 

Expressing preferences 

Play Scene B: Meeting the family. 

Show the Scene B transcript to help you and your students focus on the parts where the actors express their likes and dislikes. 

Ask the students what they observe about expressing preferences in NZSL. 

When you are expressing that you don’t like something, you sign it as LIKE but you shake your head at the same time. It also works the other way around. If you want to emphasise that you like something, you sign LIKE and nod your head at the same time. The degree or intensity of "like" and "don’t like" depends on how vigorously you shake or nod your head. 

Now play Clip 9.2a: What foods do you like? 

Project the examples below and have the students work in pairs to practise these. 

I like to drink milk.

I don’t like meat.

I really like to drink milk.

I really don’t like meat.

I really, really love milk.

I really hate meat.

Play Clip 9.2. Hand out copies of the Unit 9 sentence patterns to support the students as they practise. 

Use the memory cards for this next task. This time, as a student picks up a card, they are to say whether they like or dislike the item shown and then ask another student about their preference. 

Show Scene P. Although the context is shopping, the students may be able to pick out expressions that indicate a person’s preference for a certain item. These examples will help them to further develop their receptive and productive skills in NZSL as they learn to communicate the degree of intensity of their preferences. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Scene B transcript (.pdf). 

Surveying preferences

Teaching activities   

Getting started 

Play Scene R. Ask the students to see how much of the dialogue they can understand, especially in relation to preferences being expressed. Use your copy of the Scene R transcript to lead the questioning. 

The students now complete a class survey of food preferences using NZSL. Play Clip 9.2a and Clip 9.2b to sharpen their focus on the particular sentence patterns they are about to use. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Scene R transcript (.pdf). 

Group work 

Divide the class into four groups labelled A, B, C, and D. Groups A and B work together, and groups C and D work together. 

Groups A and C ask questions and gain responses from the groups they work with that will enable them to fill in their survey forms. Then groups B and D take their turn to follow the same process to complete their forms. 

Prepare survey forms based on the model shown below with enough rows for the number of students in your class. 

Give the students a time limit to complete this task. 

Fingerspelling rehearsal 

To revise fingerspelling and to be true to the nature of surveys, where you often have to provide your name, ask the students to fingerspell their name before they respond to the questions about their likes and dislikes. 

Have the groups pool their results and display their information in an appropriate format, for example, as a graph. Display the completed graph. 

Survey variations 

This survey could be varied by having the students follow the same process to find out: 

• what others had for breakfast 
• what others had for lunch 
• the students’ sports preferences. 

A decision made on how to present the findings-based data students gathered could be linked with what they learn in other subjects, for example, mathematics and statistics. 

Assessing progress 

The students will assess their progress in developing their accuracy and fluency in NZSL. 

Teaching activities 

Give each student a copy of the Scene B transcript. Tell them that they are to roleplay the scene in groups and that the focus is now on their signing accuracy and fluency. 

Make sure that all the students know who they are to work with and their roles. Ask them to read the transcript so that they understand the content of the scene. 

Play Scene B. You will need to play this scene many times so that they can model their signing and behaviours on the signers in the scene. To encourage the students’ thinking and creativity, tell them to substitute other food items to personalise their roleplays. 

This kind of substitution will develop their understanding, knowledge, and use of language patterns and structures. 

See Materials that come with this resource to download Scene B transcript (.pdf). 

Performing role-plays 

When the students are ready, they perform their roleplays before the class. Since the students have had good models to follow, they should now be confident enough to do this and receive feedback from their peers. Record the performances on video. 

Assessing fluency and accuracy 

View the video recording with the students afterwards and stimulate a discussion that assesses the fluency and accuracy of each student’s signing. 

Ask them how they felt about substituting other foods for those in the scenario. What did they learn as a result? 

This discussion will allow you to compare what the students are saying now with what they offered when they first began learning NZSL. It will also help them to monitor their own learning. 

Reinforce the importance of feedback with the students. Ask each student to identify two or more aspects of their use of NZSL that they need to improve from the feedback they received on their performance. Note this in their workbooks. 

Challenge them to practise their learning in the areas they have identified for themselves as needing improvement. Discuss techniques they might use to affect these improvements, for example, viewing the scene often to increase their reading fluency, modelling their signing on that of the actors, and getting more feedback from their peers. 

To complete the assessment process, ask the students to practise their role-plays again, focusing on the areas that they’ve identified as needing improvement. 

The students present their role-plays for a second time. Record these on video. Review the recording with the students so that they can assess how well they have improved the selected aspects of their performance. Replay the earlier video recording for comparison. 

The two video recordings will provide you with comparative evidence on how well your students are managing their own learning progression when they receive corrective feedback and are provided with opportunities to strive for improvement.