Inspiring words
Jokes kids love
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Using quotes in the English classroom is a great idea which can be adapted accordingly, depending on the cognitive level of your students, their creativity, imagination and emotional intelligence.They may be encouraged to draw, act out, write, start a discussion... and the list goes on...
On the one hand, teachers often use jokes in the ESL classroom to teach culture (although we need to be tentative), grammar and vocabulary. On the other hand, jokes can be used to “break the ice”, to create a relaxed learning environment, to signal a transition phase in the lesson and let’s not forget TO HAVE FUN and A GOOD LAUGH!
Even if you (as a teacher) feel (like I do) that you’re no good at telling jokes, there’s no need to worry, simply because when you take the first step your students will be more than willing to follow you. That is, they’ll be the ones who would die to share a joke with their classmates.
Needless to say, that you have to be well-prepared for that, take one step at a time, especially if you have never tried it with a class before.
Teaching suggestions
• Give out a number of jokes to groups or pairs of students. After figuring out the meaning , they discuss and agree on the funniest, silliest, etc.
• Present a model joke and then ask groups or pairs of students to invent new jokes using the same pattern.
• Divide some jokes in two parts. Give half students the first part and half students the second part. They have to mingle and find their classmate with the part that’s missing from their joke.
• A student mimes a joke (already known in class). The others have to guess.
• Play Jokes Noughts and Crosses. The teacher reads a joke (already known) and invites students to provide the punch line. The students are in two groups.
• Ask students to illustrate their favourite joke.
Hot tips
→ Be very careful with translation because there are not many jokes that lend themselves to it.
→ Decide which jokes may work well with you class since what can work perfectly well with one group of students might be a total disaster with another.
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