American Sign Language, like any language, can have more than one sign to explain or express meaning. This is much like the idea of people using pop or soda. Most native users of a language understand that there may be variants due to age, gender, region, and even ethnicity and can navigate these differences and still understand meaning.

These activities are designed to allow students to take notes of variants in ASL as they come across them throughout the course. At different times in the course, a "Variant Challenge" can take place. The "Variant Challenge" is where either as individuals or partners, students will try to brainstorm as many variants as they can.

I personally do this activity about four times during a school year and keep the winner's names on a special area of the classroom board. It's a fun challenge students have responded well in the classroom.