I hope you are having a great April Fools Day and have shared many laughs. I wanted to share a classroom practice that often brought rejuvenation each class period when I was teaching junior high English.
On one corner of the whiteboard I always posted a joke (or a pun) of the day. It was fun to watch the students come in, anticipating what the new joke would be--and the subsequent groans or laughter that would follow.
Not every period would begin with laughter, but starting the period off with a laugh usually set a good mood.
My sources for jokes included a few good-old fashioned joke books (my favorite being Get Thee to a Punnery: An Anthology of Intentional Assaults Upon the English Language by Richard Lederer). Some of the jokes were too long to write on the board, so I would simply write, "ask me" on the board. The students would ask at the beginning of the period and we would start with a shared joke.I also found a few websites for jokes. A good source is Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion website.
Here are a few jokes/puns to get you started:
What did the tie say to the hat at the beginning of the race?
You go on ahead, I'll hang around.
Two silk worms were in a race. They ended in a tie.
Happy joke-telling!
Erika, Me on the Other Side of the Screen
