To celebrate the vast selection of co-curricular opportunities on offer at Norwich School, we have started a new series to showcase a variety of clubs and societieties. To start with, we have the BSL club with reviews written by Lower 6 pupil, Ana Paduraru and Lower 5 pupils, Beth Stockham and Harriet Hart. A very special addition to this spotlight is a 'the 12th day of Christmas' rendition which you can find below the review.

I have been wanting to learn British Sign Language for so long and so I was delighted to find out that there was a BSL club being offered this year, ran by the lovely and supportive Mrs Leeder. I love all kinds of languages, and I had the same curiosity seeing someone sign and wonder what was being said as when I heard a foreign language that I didn’t speak. What are they saying? And that was a challenge to me!

One of the great things about learning sign language, I think, is that it is logical and practical, well so far at least! I also enjoy how expressive you can be with it and how it makes you aware of using different senses. Listening with your eyes really makes you focus; and given the fact that 55 percent of all communication is non-verbal, I’m finding this a very useful skill already.

The club has been running for roughly 9 weeks now, and I always look forward to Wednesday lunchtimes. The sessions feel very relaxed, and any self-consciousness soon disappears. But this is not just a social club. Our aim is for everyone to achieve a level 1 BSL certificate by the end of the year, which means that we will be able to communicate sufficiently on everyday topics with people hard of hearing. We have already learnt a good range of the basics, such as the alphabet, introductory phrases, numbers, word order, colours, feelings and potentially most importantly, Christmas songs! Yes, there are themed sessions of course, which are a well-deserved treat for all that hard work.

Obviously, learning BSL opens up countless opportunities for communicating with people that you otherwise would need to use an interpreter for. Did you know that there are around 151,000 BSL users in total in the UK, of whom 87,000 are Deaf and 25,000 people who use BSL as their main language? So why not join the club, whether you want to do it for the practical reasons or you’re just curious about learning a new language and want to have fun doing it!

- Ana Paduraru

This year in BSL club we have learnt lots of useful signs, such as: The alphabet (learning to spell our names and being able to spell out words we don’t know), Colours (helping us describe things when we learnt objects later) and Feelings. It was also fun to learn the 12 days of Christmas at the end of the year, and learnt signs about Halloween in October. We’ve really enjoyed the BSL club, its fun because you get to learn another way to communicate with people with different abilities. Personally, language lessons are our favourite and BSL is another language to learn. BSL is very useful in many ways and has benefitted me because it allows you to communicate with others who maybe can’t speak or hear.

- Beth Stockham and Harriet Hart

Lower 6 Pupil, Mari Lee also commented -

"BSL club is really fun and engaging. We just learnt the signs for The 12 Days of Christmas. I joined the club because I thought that it would be a nice way to help with accessibility if I learnt sign language."