Saturday, December 3, 2011

Jokes in the TPRS classroom

http://youtu.be/GHX2mvFVQMs
Last month I was reading a blog in which someone made reference to a handout that was posted on Bryce Hedstrom's blog regarding a workshop that Bryce did on how to include jokes into your TPRS material (The handout is called: STORIES WORTH RE-TELLING: How to Teach with Jokes). I have a unit in Spanish 4 on comedy in which I tell jokes to the students, but for some reason I didn't even think of using jokes with my level 1 students. That opened up a whole new arena of possibilities.

Two weeks ago while searching for material to use for my Spanish 4 class, I came across a TV commercial that was perfect for my Spanish 1 students. Since yesterday was a Friday, I thought it was the great time to change things up with a joke. First, I listed 3 new structures on the board. They were:
- habla en voz baja (o alta)
- biblioteca
- es maleducado (which I ended up not even using in the joke because no one is rude in the joke)

After we had practice the new structures, I straight up told the students that I was going to tell them a joke. The actual joke doesn't take much time. I could have added things to the story to include more vocabulary (i.e. she was blond, wearing a blue dress, etc), but I wanted to keep it short because we had other materials to review from the previous day.

The joke: (Click on the image above to link to the video of the commercial.)


Una mujer va a la biblioteca.
Entra la biblioteca y camina a la bibliotecaria (o a la persona que trabaja en la biblioteca).
La mujer habla en voz alta y le dice a la bibliotecaria, “Yo quiero una hamburguesa, papas fritas, y Coca Cola.”
La bibliotecaria mira a la mujer. ¡Qué extraño! La mujer está a la biblioteca y ella quiere comida.
La bibliotecaria le responde, “Esta es una biblioteca.”
La mujer mira a la bibliotecaria, y luego mira a las otras personas en la biblioteca y los libros en los estantes.
Luego, la mujer repite, pero esta vez le habla en voz baja a la bibliotecaria, ““Yo quiero una hamburguesa, papas fritas, y Coca Cola.”

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad you posted it!! Michele referenced it on her site and I keep forgetting to ask her what the heck she was talking about!! Can't wait to use these!!

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