Embedded Files
Introduction
Introduction
Finding humor in daily learning is one way that I help my students stay invested and engaged in their learning. From direct lessons like "Pig the Pug", to frequent classroom activities like call and response, silly attendance, the hello song, and acting out emotions in stories, we find little ways to make humor a priority each day. This creates a classroom mindset that learning is fun, which students internalize and remember even when learning new or challenging material.
Lesson Plan - Pig the Pug
Lesson Plan - Pig the Pug
While we use humor daily in our class, there are also multiple specific lessons that I teach throughout the year to directly encourage a sense of joy within our classroom. This lesson is a based around a read aloud of a book called "Pig the Pug" by Aaron Blabey, a silly book about a selfish dog who learns how to share the hard way. Pig, the main character in the book, has a tumultuous journey as he learns to be nice to his friends. We found humor and kindness in this lesson by using our acting skills to pretend to be different characters as their reactions became more and more outrageous.
The illustrations for "Pig the Pug", as well as the content of the story, naturally encourages students to be ridiculous and over the top when imitating him. The content of this lesson helps teach ELA standards about understanding character while also allowing students to have fun.
JoyFactorLessonPlan_RachelSkyBrown.docxBuilding Relationships
Building Relationships
My students don't just find humor in their content - they also get a genuine sense of enjoyment out of the humor I bring to our relationship as student and teacher.
Humor2.mp4In this clip, I am teaching a phonics lesson about blends, encouraging my students to try their best and have fun with our lesson by asking "Can I trick you?" before having them blend a new word. This is a common question that I ask where they emphatically like to declare responses such as "You can't trick us! We're too smart!" At points like these, my students feel a sense of joy stemming from the silliness in my attitude, while also understanding when we need to flip from silly back to serious again to continue our learning. They also enjoy when I include elements of silly body language.
Silly Attendance and the Hello Song
Silly Attendance and the Hello Song
Silly attendance is a simple element of humor we practice at least twice per week. While I call attendance each day, doing "silly attendance" allows one student to pick a funny way for the class to say hello, if they wish. Popular options include dogs barking, cats meowing, and dinosaurs roaring. Another fun way we start our day is with our hello song, which goes like this:
Hello, hello,
Hello and how are you?
I'm fine, I'm fine,
And I hope that you are too!
Each day we sing it, we sing it in English, then in Spanish, then with our tongues out like we just ate a hot pepper, then with our lips glued together like we're chewing bubble gum or eating cookies. These song are unique to our school, and it builds a sense of camaraderie based off of humor that all of my students can relate to.
Silly attendance and the hello song are quick and have no impact on our content for the day, but they do start students off laughing and having fun, which makes them more excited to join our first lesson.
Here is our "Hello Song" as sung by my fellow kindergarten teacher Ms. Destiny with the help of her daughter Evelyn (used here with permission). Evelyn, who was a kindergarten student in my class last year, sang this song with me each morning.
Ms. Destiny recorded this as part of our Distance Learning Platform response to COVID-19 to help students still feel connected to our daily routines while learning at home. As you can see from Evelyn's expression, the song brings a sense of joy and fun for the students. This is why I incorporated it into our daily classroom routine - to start the day off on a fun and silly note that makes students happy to be at school and be a part of our classroom community.
Acting Out Emotions
Acting Out Emotions
Another very important element of humor in our class revolves around quick opportunities to act. We often use our emotion words chart, a living chart that my students create with me each year as we read different books and identify character emotions. Before we read a new book, we will often take a two minute break for students to read all of the emotion words with me and to practice acting them out. Students make quick, silent faces at each other and their teacher to demonstrate what they might look like if they were excited, or frustrated, or sneaky, for example.
This quick moment of acting enforces student understanding of the vocabulary and encourages them to listen closely for more words we can add to our wall. It also sets them up emotionally to engage with a new book. I always start with the angry and sad words, and we work our way through the ambiguous to end on the happy and excited words, leaving students feeling engaged and ready to learn after a fun activity.
The emotion words chart with drawings to help students recognize each emotion.
A story arc example, where students connect emotions to character actions throughout the story.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Finding humor is a difficult to define element in any classroom. To me, it means lessons and actions that encourage student engagement in a fun and exciting way. Students want to participate in classes that demonstrate humor, and teachers want to teach in classes that are fun as well. Creating humor and opportunities for humor helps students enjoy their learning and feel invested as part of a group, with secret habits and routines that set them apart from other classes and make them feel part of a whole. These elements become such an important part of our classroom that students internalize this habit of finding joy in learning and apply it by having fun and being silly, when appropriate, on their own.
Page updated
Report abuse