This idea is slightly borrowed from a colleague of mine, who told me he was teaching his classes one idiom every day, in an effort to try to gradually build up their vocabulary.
I adjusted the idea slightly, and decided that with my young learner classes I would give them one joke every day.
The justification is to encourage the young learners to develop a love of English by adopting a playful attitude towards it. Also as another opportunity of providing them with "comprehensible input". And hopefully build some incidental vocab knowledge (although actually, I do my best to choose jokes in which the vocabulary will already be known.)
I give a joke to the young learners at the beginning of every lesson. I do just one joke every lesson of my own, but after I give my joke, I open up the floor for any of them to tell any jokes that they know. (Children the world over love these stupid jokes, and I was surprised to discover that many of my young learners already had their own repertoire of English jokes they were eager to share with the class.)
Many of the jokes are in the form of riddles. I usually write the question on the board, and see if anyone in the class can guess the answer, and then if they can't guess, I give them the answer.
Some of these jokes are short stories with a punchline at the end. I usually tell the story myself, but supplement it with visuals that show the situation--either pictures I bring in, or drawing pictures on the board as I tell the joke.
Below is a list of all the jokes I've been able to compile so far. I may add to this list as I get new ideas, but these are all the ones I've used in the classroom.
Absolutely none of these are mine. Some of these are older than the dinosaurs, others of these are just grabbed from various Internet searches.
As may be obvious from some of the jokes on this list, I get a bit desperate some times, so if anyone has any ideas of jokes that would be appropriate, please add them to the comments. (It needs to be a joke that would be appropriate for a classroom of young children, and also something that a child with a low level of English could understand--puns are okay, but only extremely obvious puns.)
Since originally posting this list, I've changed to a new school where there is much more emphasis on using PowerPoint presentations in class. So I've put all these jokes into a PowerPoint Presentation. (Google
, and embedded below). I did my best to search the Internet and find visual representations for each joke. None of the images are mine, all of them were found using Google Images searches. Because I had used these jokes before in previous classes, I sometimes had an idea of what information the students would need explained to them to understand the joke, so I often put in an extra slide with this information. However, as explaining a joke also kills a joke, this slide should probably be skipped whenever it is unnecessary.
With the PowerPoint Presentation, I would also sometimes run through several jokes in one class, and turn it into a bit of a game. The class would be divided into two teams, and if either team could guess the ending to the joke, or the answer to the riddle, they would get one point.]
A couple of times I put the riddles in crossword puzzle form. This was intended as review at the end of the term for the classes that I had been teaching the jokes to. However once the crosswords were already made up, I did also give them to some of my other more advanced classes just as a quick warm-up at the beginning of class. (The crossword puzzles are, strictly speaking, not entirely fair, because there are multiple ways of phrasing the answer, but in order for the crossword puzzle to work you need to match the phrasing to exactly what the author was thinking. However nobody seems to mind this too much. If done quickly, the fun with the crossword puzzles is that the students are given the questions, they puzzle over them for a couple minutes in their groups, and then they are quickly given the answers.)
The crossword puzzles are on google docs.
First puzzle is here, with
answers here.
Second puzzle is here, with
answers here.
The jokes are all below.
Advanced warning: Many of the jokes below are real groaners. The idea is not to collect the best jokes, but simply jokes with very obvious punchlines or very obvious puns that can be used with young children learning English as a second language.
A Joke A Day
Question: Why did the princess sleep days?
Answer: Because she
fought knights. [fought nights]
************************************************************
Question: Why is there no gambling in Africa?
Answer: Because there are too many cheetahs. [cheaters]
*************************************************************
Question: Why was 6 afraid of 7?
Answer: Because 7 ate 9.
[7 8 9]
********************************************************
Why was the baby ant so confused?
Because all his uncles were ants. [aunts]
*******************************************************
Why didn’t the boy believe the tiger?
Because he thought the tiger was a lion. [lying]
***************************************************************
What is the biggest kind of ant?
An eleph-ant.
********************************************************
Why did the boy sprinkle sugar all over his pillow before he
went to sleep?
He wanted to have sweet dreams.
*********************************************************
A man walks into a shop and sees a cute little dog. He asks
the shopkeeper, "Does your dog bite?"
The shopkeeper says, "No, my dog does not bite."
The man tries to pet the dog and the dog bites him.
"Ouch!" He says, "I thought you said your dog does not bite!"
The shopkeeper replies, "That is not my dog!"
*****************************************************
What goes up when the rain comes down?
An umbrella.
*******************************************************
As I was going to Saint Ives
I met a man with 7 wives
Each wife had 7 sacks,
Each sack had 7 cats
Each cat had 7 kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were
going to Saint Ives?
Answer: 1 [As I was going to
Saint Ives. Everyone else was going the
other way.]
*******************************************************
What has to be broken before you can use
it?
An egg
*********************************************************
Two men were walking through the woods
when they saw a bear. The men ran. The bear started chasing them. "It's no use," said one man. "We can't run faster than the
bear."
"I don't have to run faster than
the bear," said the second man.
"I just have to run faster than you."
*******************************************************
What do you have to know before you can
train a dog?
More than the dog.
********************************************************
What is it?
The poor have it.
The rich need it.
If you eat it, you will die.
Answer: Nothing
******************************************************
What is it?
The man who invented it doesn't want it.
The man who bought it doesn't need it.
And the man who needs it doesn't know
it.
Answer: A coffin
*********************************************************
What gets wetter as it dries?
A towel
*****************************************************
What kind of flower do you have on your
face?
Tulips [two lips]
******************************************************
What four letters does a thief not want
to hear?
O I C U [Oh, I see you!]
*****************************************
What
kind of snack do you have during a scary movie?
I scream [ice
cream]
********************************************
What
did the ocean say to the beach?
Nothing.
It just waved.
************************************************
Customer:
Waiter, will my pizza be long?
Waiter:
No sir. It will be round.
**********************************************
What
has four legs but can't walk?
A
chair.
********************************************
What
kind of dog can jump higher than a building?
Any
kind of dog. Buildings can't jump.
*****************************************
What
has four wheels and flies?
A
garbage truck
*********************************************
What
is something that belongs to you, but other people use it more than you do?
Your
name
*************************************************************
Q: What's the unluckiest kind of cat to
have?
A: A catastrophe!
************************************************************
What do you call a cat inside of a car?
A car-pet. [carpet]
***************************************************************
What breaks when you say it?
Silence
************************************************************
What time is it when an elephant sits on
the fence?
Time to buy a new fence.
*************************************************
What is brown and sticky?
A stick [stick-y]
**************************************************
A man sat down on a train, and he
noticed the woman sitting next to him had carrots in her ears. So he said, "Excuse me miss, but I
believe you have carrots in your ears."
She didn't respond, so he said slightly louder, "Miss, you have
carrots in your ears." Still no
response, so finally he shouted at her, "You have carrots in your
ears."
She turned around and said to him,
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I
have carrots in my ears."
************************************************
Why do some football players never
sweat?
Because of all their fans!
********************************************
What can't be beat?
A broken drum.
******************************************
Where do cows go out for the night?
They go to the moo-vies! (
Movies)
**********************************
What goes up and down but doesn't move?
The temperature
*********************************
Why did the boy throw butter out of the window?
Because he wanted to see a butterfly
***************************************
Where do bees get on buses?
At buzz stops! (
bus stops)
*******************************************
What do you call a witch on the beach?
A sand witch (
sandwich)
Update: At the new school where I'm currently working at now, they've got a lot of really creative ideas for puzzles and crosswords. One idea is to paste the questions around the room, instead of on the paper. So something I've been doing lately with these crosswords is cutting off the questions, and photocopying it with just the crossword blanks. Then the students have to walk around the room to find the questions. (Because getting this crossword correct relies on exact phrasing of the answer, I also will put the answers up around the room at different points.) This works either as just a way to get the students to walk around the room, or it can also be adopted to a
running dictation, where one student sits at their desk, and the other student runs around the room to find the questions and report back.
Below are the questions and answers I used for the first crossword puzzle. Also at Google:
drive,
docs,
pub
3 Across →
What is the biggest kind of ant? (2
words)
|
5 Across →
What has to be broken before it can be
used? (2 words)
|
10 Across →
What four
letters does a thief not want to hear? (4 letters)
|
14 Across →
Why didn’t the boy believe the tiger?
(7 words)
|
15 Across →
What kind of flower
do you have on your face? (1 word)
|
1 Down ↓
Why did the boy
sprinkle sugar all over his pillow before he went to sleep? (6 words)
|
2 Down ↓
What gets wetter as it dries? (2
words)
|
4 Down ↓
Why was the baby ant so confused? (5
words)
|
6 Down ↓
What do you have to
know before you can train a dog? (4 words)
|
7 Down ↓
Why did the princess sleep days? (3
words)
|
8 Down ↓
Why is there no gambling in Africa (3
words)
|
9 Down ↓
What goes up when the rain comes down (2
words)
|
11 Down ↓
What kind of snack do you have during
a scary movie? (2 words)
|
12 Down ↓
The poor have it. The rich need it. If you eat it, you will die. (1 word)
|
13 Down ↓
Why was 6 afraid of 7? (3 words)
|
An elephant
|
An egg
|
O I C U
|
He thought the tiger was a lion
|
Tulips
|
He wanted to have sweet dreams
|
A towel
|
All his uncles were ants
|
More than the dog
|
She fought knights
|
Too many cheetahs
|
An umbrella
|
I scream
|
Nothing
|
7 ate 9
|
