A common characteristic among my students is a lack of linguistic flexibility. They struggle during sentence and word play tasks, and are concrete in their thinking. The jokes and quick verbal banter of peers usually leaves them in confusion. Often there are also limitations in reading abilities as strengths in these areas support phonological processing skills.
With the popular kid’s holiday April’s Fool around the corner, now is a good time to work with students on creating and telling jokes. I’ve put together a lesson with four activities to target vocabulary, figurative language, structural and lexical ambiguity, and perspective taking.
with a confusing question and ends with an answer that surprises you and usually
makes you laugh.” We also discuss “punch lines”. This is a good time for children to share their jokes. If they would like, I provide a microphone and let them take their turn as stand-up comedians!
