American Sign Language (ASL) students from Woodbury High School (WHS) recently made a huge impact at South Washington County (SoWashCo Schools) elementary schools and shared important lessons about the deaf and hard of hearing culture.

WHS fourth-year ASL students used the language to translate children’s books that are centered around being deaf or hard of hearing. They then brought those books to SoWashCo elementary schools and presented them to younger students along with teaching some basic ASL.

“To make this project we first translated our book into ASL gloss, the order that we would sign it. After that, we started recording our videos using Screencastify on our school Chromebooks. We had to edit and make sure all our clips matched up with the pages correctly. It was a lot of work but it was worth it,” said Adam, a WHS ASL student.

Each translated book has a QR code inside that elementary students can scan, watch the

video, and learn some of the signs.

“The coolest thing was that they did the whole book in sign language,” said Sanvi, a second-grade student at Valley Crossing Elementary School. 

But, this wasn’t just an educational experience for the younger students. “It was important for us to create these books because it was an experience for us to be able to translate and see how much progress we made throughout the years,” said WHS ASL student, Emma.

Some of the students also said the time and effort put into this project was worth it in more than one way. “I really liked interacting with the kids afterward because I felt like that was the reward of doing this whole, big project,” said Lucas, a WHS ASL student.

The WHS student-created ASL-translated books are now available for elementary students to check out at some of our school media centers.