Sandra Smith
Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, Great Britain
sandra.d.smith@bristol.ac.uk

Adult-Child interaction in a BSL Nursery: Getting children’s attention

This paper looks at a nursery based in Leeds at which BSL is used. Only Deaf instructors and deaf children attend the nursery. This pilot project looked at how deaf adults gain the attention of deaf children of nursery age.

This addressed questions such as:

• When do adults start waving or tapping to attract children’s attention?
• When do children wave or tap to attract the adult’s attention?
• Is there a variety of styles of tapping and waving to gain attention?
• Is there a developmental structure to the learning of tapping and waving?
• How will Deaf Nursery contribute to deaf child in school age?

I will describe the project, and give some of the findings. I will also remark on the way that we recorded the tapping and waving.