Objectives: - Students will learn to transition written language to spoken language.
- Students will practice writing comedic dialogue.
- Students will learn to write for specific purposes.
Standards:
Taken from the Missouri Grade and Course Level Expectations for Grade 3 Communication Arts. Com 3.R.1 Develop and apply skills and strategies to the Reading Process. Apply a writing process in composing text. Follow a writing process to reread and revise work for an audience and purpose, ideas and content, organization, sentence structure, and word choice. Compose text with sentence variety (including imperative and exclamatory) Compose text using words that are related to the topic, and some words that are specific and accurate.
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Lesson Submitted by Jean Turney
What You Need:
1. Joke books or comic books
- I check them out from the library
- I also find them online at
Jokes by Kids and
Jokes for Kids.
2. Videos with examples of Stand Up Comedy
I love Bill Cosby. He's clean and funny.
-
Bill Cosby on Dentist
- Bill Cosby on Chocolate Cake for Breakfast
3. Stories about kids with cancer
- CancerKids.org
- Children's Cancer Fund
Preparation Instructions:
Start by gathering appropriate jokes from books and online. Browse through the websites listed in the resource sections to familiarize yourself with the resources available to the students and the categories most commonly found both in the areas of joke websites as well as the resources for stories of children with cancer.This project can be done in its entirety or just using individual components. The entire project includes creating a Comedy Show Fundraiser to raise funds and awareness for children with cancer. If there is a particular cause that is a concern to your school community, it can easily be adapted to that cause.
What To Do:
(Note: This project takes several days so feel free to break it where it seems appropriate according to your class time.)
- Start class with a 10-minute journaling time. Ask them: Write about the last time you laughed out loud. What happened? Give as many details as possible.
- After the warm-up, begin class telling the students a series of jokes. Ask students to tell jokes that they may know. Lead a discussion about humor. What types of things do you think are funny? What are some of the funniest TV shows, movies, cartoons? What makes something funny?
- Ask the students to imagine what it would be like to learn that they had cancer. How would your life be different if you had cancer? Invite them to share their own stories or share stories that you found online about children with cancer. Give students the opportunity to discuss the stories and their reactions.
- Discuss with students if they think laughter is still important for children with cancer. Have them write a quick journal response to the following quote: "Laughter is the best Medicine." Ask them to consider if there is there anything they could do to help children with cancer?
- Suggest the idea of making the children laugh and raising money by making others laugh. Ask students if they would be willing to create a comedy routine that they would share with children in the hospital and/or at a benefit evening. All the funds raised would support St. Jude's Hospital or a benefit of your choice.
- Introduce the idea of Stand-up Comedy. Ask students if they have ever heard of Stand-Up Comedy and see if they can generate some examples. Then, show some video examples of Stand-up comedy.
- Explain to the students that they are going to create their own Stand-up Comedy routine and perform it to help children with cancer.
- Research component: Chose a theme of jokes to research. Think about what interests you: sports, animals, school, aliens, or dinosaurs? Find the funniest jokes that fit your theme. Have students use the joke books you collected and the websites listed in the resource section to find what they consider the funniest jokes in their theme. They should record their jokes in their journals.
- Joke Sharing Time: In small groups have students share their top 10 funniest jokes. The members of their group will rate each joke on a scale of fist to five with fist meaning not at all funny to 5 being extremely funny. With the feedback from their group members, students need to choose 5 funny jokes that will become the content of their stand-up comedy routine.
- Creating The Routine: Have students write a three sentence introduction about themselves.
- Next, have the students put their jokes in order. What joke will you tell first, second, third, fourth and fifth?
- Then, have them write a two sentence transition to go between each of their jokes. The transition should help them to move from one joke to the next. (Let them watch comedy routines online if they want some examples of how to best transition.)
- Finally, have them write a three sentence conclusion to the routine.
- Prepping For Performance: Break students into groups and have them line edit the copy for each comedy routine.
- Then, have students perform their routine in front of their small group and give feedback on each other's performances.
- Give students a few days to memorize and hone their routines.
- Perform: Perform the routines in front of the class. Then, video tape them and post them online for others to watch or, if you can, perform your routines in a comedy night that raises money for kids with cancer.
Wrapping Up:
I have been following my friend's blog on Caringbridge documenting her son's journey through brain cancer. She had posted that she is grateful for laughter and that as hard as it seems, she can still laugh. Knowing how much kids love to tell jokes and how much they care about other kids, this seemed a great connection. I think a project on stand up comedy could also stand alone as well, but if it is possible for their performances to take on greater meaning, either as entertainment in a nursing home or cancer ward or as a fundraiser---the impact of the project would be incredible.
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