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American Sign Language 1A

This is the first course in a two-course sequence and focuses on everyday communication in American Sign Language for the Deaf. It introduces students to the basic signs, techniques, and cultural knowledge, which will support the students to start signing beginning level conversational ASL. Each lesson is built upon a familiar topic such as family, self and friends so that students will find meaningful connection to the lessons. Students will be asked to use various media tools including online resources, online dictionaries, a web cam, and the web-based Video Notes tool in Brightspace in order to record their performance in assignment submissions throughout the course. Students will be producing their own signing videos to demonstrate their learning. The goal of this course is to help develop fundamental ASL skills, and to understand Deafness, knowledge, and interest that students will need to advance to the higher levels of ASL courses.

Terms Offered

(22-23) Semester 2
(22-23) Summer
(22-23) Trimester 2
(22-23) Trimester 3
(23-24) Semester 1
(23-24) Semester 2
(23-24) Trimester 1
(23-24) Trimester 2
(23-24) Trimester 3

NCAA Approved?

Approved

Standards

Michigan World Language Standards and Benchmarks

Limited Course Capacity

We’re sorry to inform you that we have reached capacity for several of our Semester 1 and Trimester 1 courses. You’ll notice when attempting to enroll students in our Student Learning Portal that some courses are unavailable. While we are no longer accepting new enrollments for these courses at this time, many courses continue to remain open for enrollment.

With many students across the state 100% remote, demand for our online courses is greater than ever before. Because every course we offer is taught by a Michigan-certified teacher, this high volume of enrollments has created capacity issues for our teachers who provide each and every student with individual feedback.

While the Michigan Virtual team anticipated and planned for significant increases in student enrollments this Fall, the increased demand we’ve experienced has been unprecedented. As a result, we are taking steps to hire even more part-and full-time teachers to support larger numbers of student enrollments for Semester 2 as well as for Trimester 2 and 3. 

For schools that still need online learning options this year, please fill out the form at the bottom of our virtual pathways page to meet with someone to discuss other solutions. While some of our teacher-led courses are full, we may still have the capacity to help you in upcoming terms or can discuss timing to implement a whole-school or collaborative program in which local teachers from your school/district use our online course content to teach students. We also have free course content and resources available for you to use.

We know this is an incredibly stressful time for all, and we’re sorry if the courses you’re looking for are unavailable. We never want to turn away a student who wants to learn from us. Our top concern, however, is student success, and we have a policy to not take on additional enrollments if we cannot guarantee that all students will have a quality online learning experience. 

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate the unusually high volume of enrollments we are receiving.