Intended to raise researchers' and teachers' awareness of fingerspelling as an important part of signed communication, a study examined its use with deaf children in the classroom. Five trained teachers of the deaf, participating in a demonstration total communication project in a public school in the Midwest, were videotaped in their own classrooms. Their fingerspelled utterances were transcribed and analyzed for form, content, and use. Findings indicated that these teachers did not fingerspell often, but when they did, they sought to express a specific English word. The clarity of their fingerspelled utterances varied greatly, ranging from whole word gestalts to words wherein individual letters could be discerned. References are included. (SR)