Hello! I am a Speech Language Pathologist who has worked for LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) for the past 9 years.

My first 6 years, I had the good fortune to work with a Deaf/Hard of Hearing population in a Total Communication Setting. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, I developed a program to help them decode simple words! 

After moving into a school with a general population, I noticed there were a few students on my caseload who had not "broken code". That means they were unable to gain reliable sound:letter productions. Some of these students were in 2nd and 3rd grade and had had intervention for at least 1 year!

I thought "Well, if I can teach a deaf student to produce sounds by letter, I can surely teach a hearing student the same way." Over the past several years, I have been teaching many students sound decoding using this phonetic approach with American Sign Language (ASL) with good success.

I presented the program at CSHA (California Speech and Hearing Association) in Pasadena in March 2019 and due to requests for materials,  Say The Sign was born.

This simple program can be completed in 4-6 weeks with 1-2 times/week intervention with minimal motivating homework for typical K-2 students.

Please take a look at the sequencing of the program and sample videos on how to use ASL hand letters. It's pretty simple, once you get the hang of it! And it opens up the world for the students who have struggled for months if not years on sound:letter phonetic association!

Contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Smitha