What is the School of Signs?

No, there will be no pre-knowledge requirement. The School of Signs programme of study has been made in collaboration with the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD) and all lessons have been pre-recorded by deaf teachers. The lesson content will be delivered in BSL, accompanied with an English voice-over and subtitles, allowing hearing teachers and pupils to engage. Teachers will be given all of the resources, tools and lesson plans they need to support the students learning.

Yes, the programme of study is free of charge and always will be. It is available to any primary school across the UK at no cost.

Signature are also proud to offer support and training with the School of Signs, which includes detailed how-to videos for the platform and CPD for teachers. You can watch a quick overview and demonstration here

The platform will host all lesson plans, videos, resources and will also manage homework. The website can be used by teachers to present to their class and by students at home to complete homework with their own logins.

The resources will also be hosted on Purple Mash, within 2Simple, for ease of use by schools already set up to use their system.

Full lessons on each of these topics are available now, with more to be added soon:

And all of these lessons have:

1. Detailed lesson plans, which explain each activity and guide the teacher
2. Homework quizzes, which can be adjusted to suit each learners’ ability level
3. Printout activities, resources and posters for the classroom
4. An accompanying episode of CodeBreakers, a fictional web series that puts the BSL they are learning into action
5. A video dictionary of all the signs covered, with illustrations
6. Games, flashcards and wordsearches

Although the programme is designed for primary-aged children, the School of Signs is free to be used by all schools and home educators, whether they are introducing BSL for the first time or have experienced BSL teachers who want to enrich their curriculum with some new resources.

This means the programme can be run by completing the entire 15-lesson plan or using only selected lessons and printable resources. Each lesson is fully independent, working well on its own or as part of the full set, allowing each school to use whatever resources suits its pupils the best.

Home educators, after school clubs, and extracurricular groups are all welcome to sign up.

To get the most memorable learning experiences, you have to make learning fun.

That is why to accompany each BSL lesson, we have worked with ITV Signpost and an award-winning director to create CodeBreakers.

This is a fictional webseries following two spies who go undercover in a school to uncover the mysteries behind the scenes.

The learners become ‘Recruits’ in an exciting spy agency, keeping them engaged throughout the programme. Each episode applies the topic of a lesson to an exciting plot in a relatable setting, and is full of activities that show learners fun ways to use their newfound skills.

Signature created the School of Signs. We are a national charity and the leading awarding body for deaf communication and language qualifications in the UK.

Since Signature became an independent organisation in 1982 to promote and teach British Sign Language (BSL), we have supported more than 600,000 people to learn British Sign Language. We have also had thousands of other learners who have completed other deaf communication and sign language courses.