Try your hand at a new language in national campaign to learn British Sign Language

This year's Learn to Sign Week campaign, run by the British Deaf Association (BDA), takes place 4th - 10th October 2010 and is hoping to encourage even more school children to learn British Sign Language (BSL), thanks to the development of an exclusive DVD.

The BDA's annual campaign promises to be a fantastic opportunity to get people involved in BSL, with the new DVD aimed at schools and nurseries, offering flexible access to the resource all year-round.

The interactive DVD covers a host of topics including family, weather, animals and sport, aimed at providing introductory BSL knowledge and enables people to hold basic conversations in BSL.

Also featured on the DVD are fun BSL sudoku puzzles, maths quizzes with a twist, using BSL, and a BSL wordsearch, which can be used with the fingerspelling chart available on the BDA website.

Each school which registers to take part in Learn to Sign Week 2010 will receive the interactive DVD at a cost of £50, enabling the whole school to take part, learn BSL and with the added bonus of being able to repeat sessions throughout the year. Schools are also asked to come up with inventive ways of fundraising for the Deaf charity. In the past these have included sign song assemblies, sponsored silences, fingerspelling challenges and fancy dress days.

Sarah Murray, Director of Communications at the BDA, said: "We want to attract even more schoolchildren and teachers to learn to sign this year, as the BDA celebrates its 120th Anniversary. The introduction of a new DVD will make it much easier for teachers to access and schedule BSL sessions for their children, rather than relying on our website to access BSL clips.

"This way the DVD can be used again and again by the whole school and not just during Learn to Sign Week. The BDA wants to see a society where Sign Language users have the same rights, responsibilities, opportunities and quality of life as everyone else, and Learn to Sign Week is a great platform to be able to raise awareness of BSL."

Register here for Learn to Sign Week, where you can find a registration form, fundraising pack and more details about the campaign. Alternatively email: L2SW@bda.org.uk or call 01772 259725.