Humour and jokes

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello, everybody. My name's Emma. And welcome to today's lesson. I'm looking forward to today's session and I hope you are too. I can't wait to get started. But before we do, just a quick reminder. We here at Oak are here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know this lesson is going out to so many different children and families, so if you're not sure or have any questions, please do contact your child's school or use your speech and language therapy team. In today's lesson, we're talking about humour. I'm going to be giving you a little information about jokes, and then we're going to think about some jokes together. We're even going to have a go telling some jokes. Throughout all the activities, I'll be sharing some hints and tips on how you can practise your humour with your friends and family when you're out and about. So for today's lesson, all you'll need is the downloadable resource available on the Oak website with this lesson. So before we begin, find yourself a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the lesson. Turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have running on your device and then make sure that you and your talking partner or adult are seated comfortably. When you're ready, let's begin. Okay, let's start by doing some talking, and thinking about humour and jokes. The word humour is when something is funny. Humour and funny mean pretty must the same thing. A joke is something that someone says to make another person laugh. For example, a story with a funny or humorous ending. Being able to tell jokes and understand humour, laugh with others, really helps us to interact with them. It helps us to make friends. With your talking partner, I'd like you to find a funny TV show or cartoon to watch for five minutes or so. This might be called a comedy or comedies. Comedy just means funny. Talk about what happens in the clip that you decide to watch. What makes it funny? Make some notes in the downloadable resource on the pages labelled activity one. When you've finished watching your comedy or funny show, come back to the video and press play so we can continue. Knock-knock jokes are one of the best types of jokes you can learn. They have the same structure, so they're quite easy to play around with and get confident at telling. A knock-knock joke goes a little like this. Knock knock. The other person would go, "Who's there?" And then they would go, "Lena." And the other person would go, "Lena who?" And then the funny line at the end is Lena a little closer, let me tell you another joke. In that knock-knock joke, there was a bit of play with the words. The punch line or the funny line at the end of the joke was Lena a little closer, let me tell you another joke. Now, Lena is a name. It's a woman's name. But it also sounds a bit like the phrase lean a little. I've included some knock-knock jokes in the downloadable resource on the page marked activity two. Have a go telling your conversation partner some of these knock-knock jokes. With your partner, think about why the joke is funny and what word play is happening. Maybe you could make up some of your own jokes. When we're thinking about telling jokes to other people, we need to be careful of a couple of rules. Jokes should always be good-natured. This means that they should try and avoid topics that might hurt someone's feelings or make them feel angry or annoyed. If you're not sure how a joke might make someone feel, you should always ask a familiar adult whether you can check it first. Ask them to listen to the joke and they'll help you decide whether it's good-natured or not. If someone doesn't laugh at a joke, it just means that they didn't find it funny and that's okay. Everyone has different opinions on what can be funny. But jokes tend to only be funny once or twice. Sometimes we find a really good joke and we want to tell it lots and lots but jokes really are only funny the first or the second time you hear them. So try and avoid repeating the joke to the same person too many times. If you don't understand why a joke is funny that someone has said to you, it's okay to ask them to explain it to you. That way, you'll be able to think about it and understand the humour a little more. You could say, "Can you explain that one to me, please?" Or "Can you tell you tell me that one again?" Now we're going to make a poster. It's going to be a rules for funny time poster. Gather up some pens, colouring equipment and pictures. You want to make your poster as bright and colourful as possible so you might want to cut these pictures up and stick them on your poster to grab everybody's attention. We're going to make a poster for funny time at home. You could invite your friends and family to practise some of your knock-knock jokes. Remember to put some rules for the jokes on here though. We've got to remember that jokes have to be good-natured and we don't want anyone to be upset or angry by the jokes that they hear. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson. So a really big well done on all the fantastic learning that you've done today on humour. If you're able to, take a picture of your funny time poster and ask your parent or carer to share this with your school so they can see the fantastic progress that you've been making with your social communication. And if you'd like, you could ask your parent or carer to send a picture of this poster to @OakNational on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. That way I can see some of your hard work too. Well, all that's left for me to say is thank you. Have lots of fun with your jokes, take care and enjoy the rest of your learning today. Bye bye.

Humour and jokes

Humour and jokes

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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