Pacing Guide at-a-Glance for American Sign Language (ASL) 1, 2, and 3

The following Pacing Guides are for American Sign Language Levels one through three.

American Sign Language 1

By the end of each marking period, students can perform the following functions:

Marking Period 1

Unit 1: Welcome

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Use my expressive and receptive skills to greet and introduce individuals
  • Ask and tell someone how I am/they are
  • Discuss where ASL is used
  • Fingerspell names of students in my classroom, school name
  • Understand when someone fingerspells a name to me
  • Count and understand numbers 1-10
  • Begin to use facial expressions and non-manual markers
  • Make requests for school purposes
  • Explain the difference between the Medical and Cultural view of deafness

Unit 2: Starting a Conversation

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Ask and tell who someone is (friend in class)
  • Ask and tell how to say a word in ASL
  • Ask for clarification
  • Discuss a Brief History of the evolution of ASL in the United States
  • Begin to have a typical conversation with a Deaf person
  • Count and understand the numbers 11-20

Marking Period 2

Unit 3: Personal Identity

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Ask and respond about preferences (such as favorite teachers, movies, books, restaurants, numbers)
  • Sign various ways to say goodbye
  • Express a wider variety of feelings (such as tired, excited)
  • Use appropriate terms for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
  • Count and understand numbers 21-50

Marking Period 3

Unit 4: My Life

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Ask and answer questions about where I and others are from, live, were born
  • Ask and respond to phone numbers and addresses
  • Tell my family and friends about the holidays, weather, and traditions I prefer
  • Discuss the difference between where I live and other places around town
  • Identify and express weather patterns across the United States
  • Recognize and sign colors and express my favorite color

Marking Period 4

Unit 5: Family & Friends

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Express how many people are in my family and their relationship to me
  • Compare family members by using contrastive Structure/Shoulder Shifting
  • Sign about my family's/friends' life events (such as marital status, age)
  • Ask and tell my age and the age of people in my life
  • Make plans with friends to do something after school or on the weekend
  • Count numbers 51-100

Unit 6: School

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Sign what classes I am taking, have taken, where classes are, who ar
  • Sign about my class schedule
  • Sign about school places and personnel
  • Identify what level I am in school (such as freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, college, university)

American Sign Language 2

By the end of each marking period, students can perform the following functions:

Marking Period 1

Unit 1: Activities and Sports

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Identify sports and when they are played
  • Identify favorite sports teams and where they are located
  • Explain how Deaf culture influenced sports
  • Dialogue about activities people do for leisure
  • Use appropriate non-manuals when signing "if" statements
  • Begin to use Classifiers when talking about sports
  • Sign about a memory related to sports
  • Sign about a sporting event I will attend
  • Discuss different levels of expertise

Unit 2: Future Travel Plans

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Participate in Signed dialogues about my future plans
  • Give suggestions and sign responses
  • Arrange to meet someone at a future date
  • Use idiomatic phrases to respond
  • Plan a trip

Marking Period 2

Unit 3: Navigating Communities

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Communicate given directions
  • Understand directions from the signer's perspective
  • Sign dialogues about directions
  • Make a map and give directions in sign

Unit 4: Attitudes & Opinions

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Participate in Signed dialogues expressing my opinion for or against a topic
  • Emphasize the size of something
  • Ask other students' opinions on things such as, books, movies, etc., and understand their response
  • Use quantifiers to summarize an opinion
  • Comprehend a signed story about an attitude or opinion

Marking Period 3

Unit 5: My Routine

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Express my feelings about people & places in my daily routine
  • Express things that I do/did/will do repeatedly
  • Use facial expressions to communicate how I do something
  • Describe how often I go somewhere
  • Sign how frequently I do something
  • Sign for how long I do something

Unit 6: Occupations

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Sign about someone's occupation
  • Ask someone how long they have worked a particular job
  • Use "why" to explain a reason for occupation choice
  • Describe a job I would like to have in the future

Marking Period 4

Unit 7: Food

Functions/Objectives - I can:

  • Tell time and indicate duration
  • Sign about food and measurements of foods
  • Sign in a dialogue about food
  • Describe my favorite food and ask what others like
  • Sign the steps to a recipe

Unit 8: Deaf History

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Recognize key individuals
  • Understand important events between 1817-1988
  • Present about a deaf person

American Sign Language 3

By the end of each marking period, students can perform the following functions:

Marking Period 1

Unit 1: Locating Things Around the House

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Identify types of houses, furniture, and other objects in a room
  • Sign opinions about places in a house
  • Use classifiers to describe things in a room
  • Draw a floor plan and sign it
  • Describe to a partner where something is kept in a room
  • Sign the layout for a backyard and how I would remodel it

Unit 2: ASL Literature

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Recognize ABC stories in Deaf culture
  • Create my own ABC story & present it to the class
  • Recognize Number stories in Deaf culture
  • Create my own number story & present it to the class
  • Recognize Classifier stories in Deaf culture
  • Create my own classifier story and present in to the class
  • Understand the importance of this literature in Deaf culture

Marking Period 2

Unit 3: Complaining, Making Suggestions and Requests

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Identify signs for sicknesses and annoying behaviors
  • Recognize the difference between recurring and continuous signs, such as the sign 'every morning' is signed different than 'all morning'
  • Sign a dialogue with a classmate about sickness, to make a request, or to complain
  • Tell and understand the time
  • Tell a story of something I lost and present it to the class
  • Describe a sickness at the doctor's office
  • Participate in a debate, take a side of a topic that is popular in Deaf culture and debate it in class

Marking Period 3

Unit 4: Influence of Origin

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Identify countries and nationalities
  • Say where someone is from
  • Write a biography about someone I look up to and present it
  • Research a country and present to the class
  • Utilize cardinal directions to describe locations
  • Sign dialogues about where others and I are from
  • Recognize differences between past and current signs for countries

Marking Period 4

Unit 5: Community Life

Functions/Objectives: I can…

  • Describe what people are wearing
  • Describe how food tastes
  • Identify popular places in the community
  • Describe how others and I are dressed
  • Create a classifier story about where I go in the community
  • Talk about the weekend
  • Recommend places to visit to the class
  • Write a children's story and present it to class