New Materials

Remarkable performances by Marlee Matlin and William Hurt helped make Children of a Lesser God one of the most critically acclaimed films of 1986. The movie is a love story based on the hit Broadway play about John Leeds, an idealistic special education teacher, and a headstrong Deaf girl named Sarah. At first, Leeds sees Sarah as a teaching challenge. But soon, their teacher/student relationship blossoms into a love so passionate it shatters the barrier of silence that keeps them apart.

This is a series of 24 lessons on DVD and a manual especially for paraeducators, teacher’s aides, and teachers that features skills and strategies for communicating effectively with young children who have special needs with a focus on children who are sensory impaired. Topics include recognizing and responding to communication signals, building communication into daily routines, interactive turn-taking, active vs. passive communication, choice-making, using calendar systems, encouraging peer interaction, and more. Each topic has a laminated card with lesson tips.

A series of instructional Signed English videos based on the sign system used at the Tennessee School for the Deaf in Knoxville, TN. There are 12 Units in the series with two tapes per Unit: Lessons 1-4 and Lessons 5-8. Placement review tapes covering Units I-IV; V-VIII; and IX-XII serve as reviews of the signs previously taught. *Accompanying Handouts Are Available For Each Unit.

Rex Lowman’s series of more than 200 practice paragraph tests are signed with pauses between each paragraph for self-testing of receptive sign language skills. The series provides good practice in reading fingerspelling. A minimum level of proficiency in Signed English is needed to begin the series. Each tape is increasingly more difficult than the previous one.

Answer sheets are available.)

This video series, “ASL for Families” is a set of 5 DVDs composed of 37 lessons designed to correspond with and reference the ASL lessons found in the SKI-HI produced Deaf Mentor Curriculum, which is available but not required. Each lesson features an ASL concept, presentation of vocabulary and practice sentences. The tapes are designed to provide instructional support and practice to families as they learn ASL concepts from their Deaf mentor, but can also be used by anyone learning ASL.

Video 1 81 min.
Grammatical and emotive aspects of facial expressions, basic declarative statements, asking yes/no questions, changing statements to questions, asking a wh-question, directional verbs, showing courtesy, showing possession, presence of objects with the verb ‘have’ and the correct usage of ‘no’.

Video 2 78 min.
Qualities and attributes, ASL word order: topic-comment, ASL word order: Noun-adjective, ASL word order: three signs or less, ASL word order: subject-verb object, use of space, referring to persons and places, using pronouns, possessive pronouns, facial expression, showing different meaning using facial expression and sign expression.

Video 3 78 min.
Fingerspelling, loan signs, temporal aspect of ASL, movement of a sign showing the amount of time in an activity, adjective/adverb modulation, use of classifiers, pronomial classifiers, the time line in ASL.

Video 4 55 min.
ASL word order: time indicators, cardinal number system and quantifiers, ordinal number system, unique number system, plurality: how to show more than one.

Video 5 32 min.
Number incorporation, showing past tense in ASL, future tense in ASL, ASL word order: time sequence principle, using conceptually accurate signs.

This video presents information that will help family members of deaf and hard of hearing infants and young children learn some basic hearing aid management skills. Parent advisors describe: the anatomy of the ear, tests given to check levels of hearing, audiograms, functions of the hearing aid, fitting the aid, a daily listening check for the device, establishing full-time usage, care for the aid, and troubleshooting the hearing aid focusing primarily on the problem of acoustic feedback.

This is the story of a family’s journey through a confusing maze of emotions, medical opinions, politics and the life-changing decisions that must be made when a deaf child is born to a hearing couple. It follows a year in the life of four-year-old Thomas Tranchin and the struggle of the producer/director and his family to unlock Thomas’ expressive capacities. It presents clearly and frankly the struggle of the parents to choose a communication mode. The tape is invaluable for hearing families of newly diagnosed deaf children and the professionals who work with them.

Practice sentences for receptive skills in ASL:
Unit #1: Time related signs, “wh” question words
Unit #2: Familiar relationship pronomials
Unit #3: Gallaudet related signs, adverbs of time
Unit #4: Departments of instruction, academic related signs
Unit #5: Feeling and attitudinal related signs
Unit #6: Home related signs
Unit #7: Signs related to people, health and appearance

K-12 and post-secondary interpreter, Maureen Ann Longo, CI, demonstrates and explains signs and their concepts used in the classroom related to Economics. Many of the signs are initialized forms of appropriate ASL glosses.

Maureen Longo Tuccelli, CI, demonstrates and explains vocabulary used in American Government classrooms. Vocabulary include “Checks and Balances, Habeas Corpus, Anarchy, Implied Powers”, etc. You can also use this DVD to teach deaf children vocabulary.

Paul Jones, a Deaf ASL storyteller, tells three stories with lots of action and details. Taped live at University of Florida’s Deaf ASL Storytelling Festival, Paul Jones moves across the stage and sometimes off screen. This is good receptive practice for ASL learners and ITP students. *People that get queasy easily might suffer motion sickness while watching this DVD.