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1This assignment is about using humour so that students can develop their skills inwriting narratives, and is aimed at a Year 6 class.
Building the field
Humour can be an effective tool for engaging students in the classroom learningenvironment, and can also be useful in promoting a positive learning environment.Of course it can also contribute to the time spent at school being enjoyable for students. While humour can be used at almost any time in the form of jokes and afun atmosphere in the class, it can also be used as part of the curriculum, especiallyin literacy teaching. With so many authors being able to tap into a child’s sense of humour, the task of getting children to read books can be a much easier task for teachers if the children are given access to the right books.Not that this is a new concept, with authors such as Roald Dahl or Judy Blumeimmediately coming to my mind as writing books that I know helped me develop aninterest in reading. But at the same time these two authors had quite a different styleof humour, with Dahl often being more silly and explicit, while Blume’s humour camefrom being able to relate to her characters and their predicaments. For this reasonstudents should have access to a whole range of styles to find out what they enjoythe best.Humour in literacy could also be introduced through poetry or through links to thearts curriculum with songs or plays. Many popular books have been adapted intoplays and the students could either read or perform them. Also many children’sbooks have been adapted to television, and while watching a video may almostseem a lazy lesson, it could be valuable if students get to watch a program that thebook is available for.Humour could also be used when investigating language forms such as oxy-morons,clichés and euphemisms, helping the students to tune into lessons on these parts of our language and where they are used.
Modelling the selected genre
The main purpose of narratives is to tell an entertaining story, so need to keep areader’s attention, and are structured so that this can occur. An ideal way to showstudents how a narrative is produced is to read a short story as a class and then getBrad
 
2the students to identify the features. To demonstrate this I will refer to the short story
Without a Shirt 
, by Paul Jennings, from his book
Unreal 
.The first part of a narrative is the orientation where we are introduced to the maincharacters for the story, who in
Without a Shirt 
include Brian, Mr Bush, SueFeatherstone, and Shovel the dog. The orientation can also include when andwhere the story is set, depending on their importance. While this may seem similar to a recount, what is important in a narrative is to have interesting descriptions of thecharacters so that the reader can build up their own mental image of the story.Descriptions can also be of characters’ personalities or experiences, and not justphysical appearances. We aren’t given a physical description of Brian, yet find himan interesting person because of his speech problem and how his classmatesperceive him. Examples of physical descriptions in the story are Brian’s dog Shovel,with a missing eye and half an ear portraying him as a ragged old dog, and MrsFeatherstone with her blue hair and real pearls telling us she is elderly and wealthy.Next in a narrative there needs to be some kind of complication, problem or dilemma. Quite often there may be a number of these. In
Without a Shirt 
there isBrian’s speech problem, his impending class talk, and the scenario surrounding thesad bones even though the story is only a few pages long. In longer novels theremay be several different complications, or similar complications leading up to alarger event later in the book. Again the level of detail in how these issues aredescribed can add much to the way the book engages the reader.Finally these complications need a resolution, so that the story is completed and thereader has answers to the question of ‘what happens next’ that makes them want toread more of the story. Quite often this resolution brings the rest of the story intoperspective. For example we find out that Brian’s speech problem was somehowburdened upon him so that when he eventually laid his great, great grandfather’sbones to rest, he wouldn’t do so ‘without a shirt’ to make his head comfortable.This is the structure for a narrative in its simplest form. Writers could even rearrangethe story to create more interest. This could be shown to the students with other examples. Some may even have an ambiguous resolution leaving us to work out for ourselves how the story finishes, or if there is more to the story.Brad
 
3
Joint construction (Modelled writing)
Now comes time to get the students involved in writing, but first of all as a groupactivity. Choose a different topic to write about so that the students’ already brewingfunny ideas don’t get revealed and wasted. For example tell the class that thenarrative is to be an adventure story and brainstorm for a few minutes to get anorientation to start the story. Get the students to think of what kind of people wouldbe in an adventure story, and what settings or scenarios they would find themselvesin. There would most likely be a hero or heroine, some kind of a side kick, maybe avillain, and some sort of great task or confrontation they are all involved in.Using a white board or smartboard so all students can see, begin to write out thestart of the story, saying out loud the descriptive words that can be used for characters or the setting, trying to make the story more interesting. Words can beused from various word activities that the students can participate in. If somethingsounds more interesting, cross out what is written and add the new part in. Thisshows the students that writing doesn’t have to be perfect the first time, and is mostlikely not to be. It can even be enjoyable to develop a story to make it more excitingand fun.Continue to write the narrative, bringing in the complication and moving onto theresolution. Being a one lesson activity, the story will essentially be a short plotsummary of what could be a much longer story, but all the required elements of anarrative should be present and pointed out to the students. Rereading and revisingparts of the story gives students a better look at how the writing process occurs.At least by using an adventure instead of a funny story the students cannot copywhat is on the board when it is time for them to write. Perhaps after they havecompleted their funny stories some time from now the students would like to revisitand complete the adventure.
Independent Construction
Independent construction is when the students get to use their own ideas to writetheir individual narratives. Because the aim is for the students to produce a narrativethat is humorous in some way it will be necessary to give them some guidance inhow humour can be brought into the structure of the text. The students may initiallythink that they need to have some sort of funny complication in their story, but thereBrad
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mbed2010

Im sure we all did well in english, but as usual we all got pretty slammed. good on you for putting it up!

reply05 / 21 / 2010
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