Adding humour will pave the way for happy learning
The workshop conducted recently on the ‘Importance of humour in the classroom’ focused on this specific aspect of our classroom.
Charlie Chaplin said … ‘ A day without humour is a day wasted’. In this pandemic with the increased time that children are staying indoors and all the untoward happenings around them, we as teachers must keep students happy and interested.
The workshop conducted recently on the ‘Importance of humour in the classroom’ focused on this specific aspect of our classroom. We as teachers get so engrossed in completing our syllabus that we are not able to appreciate the mental frame that children are in these days. To help bring this change we must introduce humour in classroom.
Every teacher’s goal is to be effective in the classroom and help students learn. We as educators want our students to be eager and engaged. Humour has the power to fuel engagement. We as teachers need to realize the main reasons for incorporating humour in our teaching.
- It helps in keeping the students engaged because when they are laughing they are paying more attention. It keeps them on their toes and if they realise that something funny is coming they tend to be more into the lesson.
- At times it makes the student realise that a teacher is a human too. So many times the teacher-student relationship is such that they appear very cold, wise and formal. A little laughter shows the students that the teachers have the same thoughts and feelings, and this makes the teacher seem to be more human and trustworthy. It is very important that every teacher should have the ability to laugh at their own mistake, this shows that they are also real and humble.
- Laughter helps in creating a feeling of oneness in the classroom. Sharing jokes and funny moments make students bond together and also has shared memories to look back on.
- Another wonderful use of humour is as a stress-buster it helps children relax and not get tense about a situation be it exam/competition etc. It helps them maintain a perspective.We as adults relax by having a good laugh be it watching comedy shows or movies.
The same thing holds good for children. If you try to reminiscence your child’s childhood you will recollect how kids have always had maximum part of their learning through various comic books, etc. where humour has been a major part of the teaching- learning process. Try to do the same in classroom.
Numerous games can be played with children which are not only fun but learning is also happening simultaneously like Chinese Whisper, Skip a number, Adjectives for things, Complete a sentence, draw yourself as an animal etc.
So it is very essential as teachers for us to add humour into our classrooms it could be through messages, art, music, video, ‘being silly”, but we need to constantly mix it up and have variety. So let’s make our classroom happier places…after all, they say Laughter is the Best Medicine and in the pandemic that is the medicine we all won’t mind having.
-Chitra Santosh Senior Coordinator,
Gitanjali Devashray
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