Signing for schools and pre-schools

The MCH Children’s Speech and Language Therapy team have developed this video series for our education colleagues in schools and pre-schools. Staff are encouraged to use signing alongside spoken language (sign as you say the key words) with children who are developing their talking. For more information on this please visit Introduction to signing. The videos are very short (around 1 minute each) and many include just one sign.

To support staff to become confident with signing, schools/pre-schools could recommend that all staff watch one episode each week and to try to use the sign(s) many times that week. You are of course welcome to use the series in any way that suits your school/pre-school.

To help make your signing as clear as possible you might want to practise making the commonly used hand shapes shown below:

The signs used in this signing series are BSL signs – BSL (British Sign Language) is a full language which does not include spoken words however the signs from BSL can also be used alongside spoken language to support children who are developing their talking.