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Saturday, September 16, 2006

cued speech workshop

The Cued Speech workshop was a little bit tougher than what I expected it to, unfortunately I wasn't able to attended the last day of it today to finish it up. But, I was expecting actual signing like ASL but Cued Speech has NONE of the sign language I know and I was getting so confused! It's actually like you're signing in phonics. The bad thing is for me that when I learned to read, my school system didn't teach phonics so I had no clue what I was doing. Oh well, I gave it a try. If you know phonics, it would be fairly easy. For those of you who might be interested in learning more, visit here. I think I will stick to teaching Joey plan old American Sign Language like I know.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know much about ASL, but I can tell you that Miss E adapts all of her signs anyway, so unless one knew here it wouldn't matter.

I would love to know cued speech, but my brain is no longer a sponge, and I don't believe that I could absorb a new learning process like that.

It seems like a wonderful tool for those who can learn it.

Anonymous said...

Jack does a little just plain ol' sign language. It's so cool to see them get it and start using the signs! You're right...you gave it a try and the same things don't work for everyone.
I bought a book called Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome. It shows you how to teach sight words to them...but he wanted to point out each individual letter instead of seeing the whole word. We're going to come back to it soon. I tried it at the beginning of summer and he just didn't get it. Maybe he'll get it a little better the 2nd time around.
Joey's a good age to start doing sign language; I bet he catches on quick!
:)

Michelle said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! By the time I even heard of cued speech we were well into learning ASL and just didn't know if we should switch or add on or what! I bet Joey will pick up signs before you know it!

Wystful1 said...

Our grandson learned the "plain" American Sign too! It's, to me, more sensible anyway, 'cause if need be, it's universal and he can be understood by many more people!!

Happy Monday

Leah Spring said...

Hi there! It's nice to hear your feedback on learning to cue. I'm Leah Spring, founder of Down Cues.

Where did you take your class? I'm saddened to hear you found the workshop so frustrating. It should NOT be this way! Everyone who is teaching the class is teaching it from the perspective of deafness and hearing loss. Myself and one other person are the only ones I know of teaching it from the DS perpective. It DOES make a difference in learning the system, partly because we spend A LOT of time teaching HOW to apply the system for kids who have DS, all based on the research that's already been done on how kids with DS learn language, learn to read, etc. The ONLY instructors you will find in the nation who have the background to teach to the DS related population are myself and Shelly Burrow (president of the Cued Language Network of America) or myself.

The problem with ASL is it has ZERO connection to the written word. So ASL will help you FOR A TIME, but once your child is learing to read and write, it has NO benefit. This is where CS kicks in. Kids with DS are hearing kids, hearing English, and ASL doesn't even compare to English.

When we as parents of kids with DS are using "ASL" with our kids, we're giving them a language that we ourselves aren't even fluent in. Language in..language out, right? If we're putting in a disfluent language, how can we expect to get fluent language out?

Last week I taught an intro to cue class for group of 30 SLP's from a large school district here in my area. The informal discussions that took place were AWESOME, and VERY informative, as all those in attendance were realizing they really need to change how they're doing some things for kids who have DS and/or auditory processing issues.

Again, I'm sorry you came out feeling so frustrated, and that you weren't able to see how you could apply CS to your child's life. Unfortunatly it's because the instructor didn't explain it to you.