Chaining: Teacher Checklist

Chaining is a bilingual strategy that links a concept across several representations, such as ASL, fingerspelling, print, visuals, and examples, so students build deep, connected understanding rather than memorizing isolated words. Use this checklist to plan and reflect on your own instruction. It walks through planning the concepts and representations you will connect, establishing meaning clearly in ASL and making the connections explicit, and checking that students can explain and independently apply what they have learned. The closing reflection questions help you notice where students can take more ownership. Use it to keep instruction focused on concept-level understanding across ASL and English.