Testing season is in full swing across the country. Everyone is feeling the pressure. As a cheerleader for both students and staff, I offer one simple idea: laughter. As far as I know, nobody ever died from a giggle. If they did, I really don't want to know about it.
Kids love, love, love our joke and riddle books. I can hardly keep them on the shelf in the library. The poor books live a rough life...they are literally "loved to death". They are usually not Accelerated Reader books, but what the heck. Those silly books are probably one of our greatest teaching tools for language: vocabulary, metaphors, use of quotation marks - you name it. If our students can understand the subtle and not so subtle meanings in humor, then we have truly arrived as educators of the mind and heart.
Listed here is the link from Merlot
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=329573
This is the link for the article for humor in teaching.
http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue6_2/garner.html
So put on those funny glasses with the rubber nose that you have been keeping in the desk drawer and tell a joke and diagram the sentence of the punch line. You've done several things...taught a valuable skill in grammar and made yourself and the kids feel good about learning.
"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose." ~Woody Allen
Until the next chapter, be good!
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