Humor In Teaching

Obviously there are many characteristics that make a great teacher.

Humor in teaching. If you make a mistake or a lesson. Teachers can use humor to bring content to life through games parody or comical voices or wigs or hats. Keep a quotable quotes bulletin board or corner in your room. Teachers don t have to always be on it s ok to laugh. Use humor to enhance classroom joy use humor to develop a sense of community use content related humor use age appropriate humor sandwich humor between instruction and repetition. Paul mcghee s developmental stages of humor to understand the humor stage for the children that you work with each day. Showing your students that you re a person too.

When students are laughing they are paying attention. Humor can effectively be used in the classroom as a teaching tool to promote positive learning. Teaching strategies for using humor utilize the class clown. I believe that two key ones are flexibility and a sense of humor. Add humorous items to tests homework or class assignments even at the university one of my favorite options when i. Just recently award winning humorist linda edgecombe spoke at a federation conference. Humor in the classroom and laughter in the classroom are two things that i find to be very important when i teach.

For years teachers have tried ways of bringing humor into the classroom to keep kids engaged and mary kay morrison past president of the association of applied and therapeutic humor and author of the book using humor to maximize learning says brain research shows that it s a good idea. Instead of punishing the student who is always trying to make their classmates laugh when they. The culture of your institution the topic of your course and a host of other factors affect the utility of humor as a teaching tool. Here s how three teachers on nea today facebook use humor to bring content to life. Humor improves teaching and learning 1. We aren t all funny all the time. Lighten up and laugh.

Humor keeps students on their. Humor strategies to use laugh at yourself when you do something silly or wrong mention it and laugh at it. Likewise it also helps to solve psychological and emotional disorders as it works as a form of group therapy. Sometimes the teacher seems so much like the wise distant person. Keeping your students engaged. When humor is used in education this helps to streamline and strengthen teaching and learning. Students respond to their teacher s playfulness and appreciate the effort he or she puts into making a lesson fun.

This in turn favors a motivating and enjoyable experience that helps to create educational projects that are really meaningful.