Learning about glossing and assessing progress
The students will learn more about the written form of NZSL and assess their progress across the outcomes to be achieved.
Glossing
Hand out the "Scene B – Meeting the family" transcript and discuss with your students the way that NZSL is written with glossing.
At the beginner level, your students do not need to know how to gloss. They just need to recognise some basic glossing conventions.
- Signs are written using capital letters (for example, NUMBER).
- A hyphen joins two words to indicate that only one sign is used (for example, THANK-YOU).
- Pointing is shown by the symbol IX ("IX" means "index finger").
- Non-manual signals are indicated (for example, nod).
- Questions are shown (for example, [Gloss: TIME WHAT; Non-manual signal: whq]).
Comparing sentence patterns
Ask them to look at the NZSL sentence patterns and compare them with the patterns of the sentences in English. Discuss what they observe, for example, that the differences in word order indicate a different way of thinking about and expressing ideas.
Play Scene B– Meeting the family so that students can associate the glossed form of NZSL with how it is presented in the scene.
Assessing progress
Select a task or tasks that suit the needs of your students from those listed below. Note that some require a less creative use of language than others. Some students may find the more creative tasks challenging if they have not consolidated their learning. Others may be ready to extend their knowledge and build their communicative fluency with the more creative tasks.
Assessment criteria
Give students a copy of assessment criteria (Worksheet 10.1). You can discuss the assessment criteria with your students to find out how they will use the criteria to measure how well they and others can use NZSL to communicate.
- The students work in groups to role-play Scene A – Ben comes to visit using the Scene A transcript as a prompt.
- Each pair joins with another pair, and the students take turns to give information about each other’s families using the information that their partner provided.
- The students take turns to introduce someone else’s family to the class using a picture or photograph as reference.
- The students work in groups to make up role-plays to perform to the rest of the class. They use the vocabulary and sentence patterns from Units 1 and 2.
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Worksheet 10.1: Unit 10 Assessment criteria
Final task
To conclude this activity, have a discussion with the students about their learning and ask them to identify aspects of their learning that they need to improve. Have them make a note of these in their workbooks as a reminder to work on them.
Students learn to communicate effectively in the language they are learning when they have opportunities to engage in genuine social interaction.
