The Spotlight on Strategies series provides help, tips, and tricks for integrating Discovery Education digital media into your curriculum.

Leave a comment and let us know how you’ll use this strategy in your class.

Have an idea for a strategy?  Share it with us by completing this form and we’ll try to feature you!

Spotlight on Strategies: LOL

PDF and Vignette Version

The development of humor parallels Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. In the same way that physical play strengthens bodies, word play develops a child’s mind. To understand humor, a student must learn new things about words or logical relationships. Students of all ages expand their senses of humor as they recognize that the meaning of words can be ambiguous and that words and phrases may sound alike yet have different connotations. Jokes and riddles  stimulate intellectual growth. (Chiasson, 2002)  In this strategy, students  create a meme using images to help explain the joke or riddle or bring comprehension to the humor.

Materials:  Discovery Education image, paper, pencil or marker, construction paper, glue or glue stick

1. Begin by helping students become familiar with a variety of different jokes, riddles, and other appropriate forms of humor by investigating both print and electronic resources. 
2. Ask students to select a joke or riddle that they find. You may wish to have them research jokes about a certain subject area or concept.
3. Next, have students search the Discovery Education image collection to locate an image that helps readers better understand their joke. Print a copy of the image and mount it on construction paper.
4. Write the joke on a strip of paper and glue it at the top of the image 
5. Write the punch-line on a separate strip of paper and glue it to the bottom of the image. 

The LOL strategy provides students with an opportunity to develop their language, comprehension skills, and grasp of humor in a fun and engaging visual manner. To wrap up the experience, be sure to give students the opportunity to share their jokes and memes with their classmates.

• Use technology tools to create electronic memes by having students download images and then use either word processing, graphics software, or web 2.0 tools such as Make a Meme or ImageChef to create and share them.
• Use an app like ChatterPix or YAKiT Kids to make the image tell the joke.
• Once students grasp the concept of the formula of the type of humor/joke, have them write their own jokes and trade with other students.

Save