The High-Fives of Humor

As an elementary school teacher, I often start and end my day with high-fives. These high-fives are a way for me to (appropriately) connect with students. What does a high-five really mean to a child? Probably not as much a a good laugh. Using humor in the classroom is one of the deepest ways to connect with your students. Why you ask? Oh no, do I have to cite a bunch of research now to twist your arm into believing me? Fine! Here you go you research junkie!


According to Cornett (1986) and Kelly (1983), humor can facilitate learning in the classroom in the following ways:

1. It attracts attention and provokes thought, helping to hone the skills of prediction, decision making, recall, problem solving, and visual imagery.
2. It liberates creative capacities, helping students to discover incongruous relationships and solve serious problems in creative ways.
3. It helps gain friends, promote group membership, and deal with awkward moments.
4. It improves communication and develops vocabulary and reading skills through the use of puns, figurative language, homonyms, and homophones.
5. It helps to deal with difficult moments.
6. It can be an entry into the study of other cultures and reflects a group's cultural values.
7. It promotes good health and can be effective in dealing with tension, especially prior to test taking.
8. It develops a positive attitude and self-image, assisting in classroom discipline, conflict resolution, and diffusion of tension.
9. It motivates and energizes.
10. It reinforces desired behaviors.

Now, with all of those benefits how could you refuse to use humor in your classroom. There is no denying the endless amount of benefits humor bestows upon a classroom, a teacher and the students!
So let me give you a little high-five to help you integrate humor into your classroom.

In Provine's literature on integrating humor (2000), there are five tactics and results associated with the integration of humor.

1. Make interpersonal eye contact helps to set the mood for students when using humor. It also helps to establish a deeper relationship between the teacher and student. 
2. Create a casual, caring, safe and fun-loving environment is necessary, so that students can relax and enjoy the learning experience as they open up to you and the curriculum. Students should be eager to actively participate in every aspect of the classroom. 
3. Adopt a laugh- ready attitude. When teachers are able to laugh at the silliness of their curriculum or day to day situations that arise, they create an atmosphere where students can also let go of inhibitions to share in the laughter and joy of learning. The students absolutely love when their teacher laughs at themselves! ( Whenever, I make a mistake, I blame it on Monday Brain. The students always laugh and yell out, "It's Wednesday!" and I just say, " yeah well I forgot to take Monday brain off when Monday was over." This gets them rolling with laughter every time. 
4. Provide humorous material and examples for students, especially if you want them to become a humor producer themselves or you can just provide students with humorous examples, assignments, tests, and quizzes to help build their motivation and learned content. 
5. Remove social inhibitions. Make it okay for laughter to ring out in your classroom. When students are comfortable, they are more prepared to learn. Make it okay to produce, appreciate and/or share in the laughter. 

So, there you have it! The high-fives of creating humorous classrooms as outlined by Provine. Are there other high-fives in education that we should be made aware of? Absolutely! Check out the list to the right of this post. Click on the picture of the high-fives, so that you can read the funny lists about humor and teachers. 


One of my favorites is: Top 5 Things Teachers Do with Their Spare Time.

1. What spare time? Don't have any! 


Take a moment to check out the other lists. They are from the book, The Laughing Classroom. A book worth finding because it has so many different ideas of how to increase laughter in your classroom. Good luck with your continued quest to be the funniest teacher you can be!