Deaf Scientists in the Making: Developing a Bilingual Understanding of the Scientific Method

This bilingual ASL/English curriculum addresses the concepts of the Scientific Method in preparation for students to complete a Science Fair project. Eleven lessons are carried out with a multi-modal hands-on approach. The first seven lessons focus on the steps and execution of the scientific method process. The last four lessons assist with developing the skills for presenting their findings and displaying their work in both ASL and English. The goals of the curriculum is to utilize academic English and American sign language, identify steps of the scientific method, and apply these steps to independent scientific discovery. This is implemented during a ten week placement at a Deaf residential school evaluating student’s work through classroom observation, signed class discussions, written worksheets, and science fair projects in both languages