American Sign Language poems and “ABC Stories” are a traditional art form in Deaf culture. The residential students have been studying American Sign Language (ASL) and in the process have created and performed their own ABC stories. Traditional ABC stories use the alphabetical handshapes in ASL to create a story. The story starts with a sign using the “A” handshape and each sign thereafter follows in ABC order, ending with Z.
As you can see in the video, our sign language stories are a little unconventional. Not only are the students allowed to use each hand shape a few times before moving on to the next letter, the poems are original works by the students.
