ASL worksheet · Deaf culture and manners
What Is ASL?
Read about American Sign Language and answer the questions.
- Grade level
- Grades 2–5
- Time
- About 20 minutes
- Answer key
- Yes, page 2 of the PDF
- Kids practice
- Knowing that ASL is its own language, Polite ways to get attention, Understanding name signs, Respecting the many ways people communicate
What kids do
Printed on the sheet:
- American Sign Language, or ASL, is a language you see instead of hear. Signers use their hands, their faces and their bodies to share ideas. Many Deaf and hard of hearing people in the
- United States and much of Canada use ASL, and so do their families and friends.
- ASL is not English on the hands. It has its own words and its own grammar, the rules for putting signs together. A sentence in ASL often puts its signs in a different order than English does.
- Sign language is not the same all over the world. Many countries have their own. British Sign
- Language is very different from ASL, even though people in both countries speak English. ASL is related to French Sign Language, because a Deaf teacher from France helped start the first lasting school for the deaf in America in 1817.
- Fingerspelling, spelling a word letter by letter, is one part of ASL. Signers use it for names, places and words that do not have a sign.
- What does ASL stand for?
- Signers use their hands. What else do they use?
Teacher tip
Before reading, ask kids whether they think sign language is the same around the world. Return to their guesses after the passage.
How to use it
- Keep the tone respectful: Deaf culture is a culture, not a problem to fix.
- Read the passage aloud together and stop to talk about each idea.
- Make every handshape with your own hand as kids work. Your hand is the best model in the room.
Watch for
Calling ASL a code for English. It is a full language with its own grammar.
Talk about it
- How would you get a friend’s attention without your voice?
- Why do you think ASL is its own language and not English on the hands?
Take it further
Practice a silent lunch or a silent game where everyone uses gestures and fingerspelling.
US Letter, prints well in black and white. Free for home and classroom use: print as many copies as you need.
More deaf culture and manners worksheets
Grades 1–4
Getting Someone’s Attention
Sort the ways to get a Deaf person’s attention into polite and not polite.
Grades 1–4
Ways We Communicate
Deaf and hard of hearing people communicate in many ways. Match each tool to what it does.
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