Summary
This downloadable PDF lesson plan for English teachers explores humor and wordplay through puns. This fun ESL class material uses a video from "The Last of Us" to teach students about homophones, joke structures, and cultural nuances in English comedy.
This engaging lesson plan for your English class explores the art of the pun through a variety of fun activities. Students start by deconstructing classic jokes, then match vocabulary to its double meaning. The lesson centers around a video clip from "The Last of Us," where students complete punchlines and analyze the wordplay. Grammar practice focuses on forming joke questions, and a creative task challenges learners to write their own puns. This class material is perfect for bringing humor into the ESL classroom and exploring language nuances.
Activities
- Students begin by analyzing classic puns to understand the concept of wordplay. They then complete a matching exercise to identify the dual meanings of words and phrases that are common in English jokes, such as 'outstanding' and 'dawned on me'.
- The core activity involves watching a video of Ellie telling jokes from "The Last of Us." Learners complete a gap-fill listening exercise for the punchlines and then work in pairs to explain the specific wordplay used in each joke from the clip.
- A grammar focus helps students practice forming common joke questions by unscrambling sentences. The lesson culminates in a creative task where students use provided homophone pairs like 'see/sea' and 'ate/eight' to write their own original puns.
Vocabulary focus
The vocabulary in this lesson focuses on wordplay and ambiguity. Key terms include pun, wordplay, homophone, and homonym. Students will work with phrases that have double meanings, such as 'dawned on me' (realized / sunrise), 'outstanding' (excellent / standing outside), and 'came back to me' (remembered / physically returned).
Grammar focus
The grammar section focuses on the interrogative structures commonly used in English jokes. Students will practice forming questions using the 'What/Why + did + subject + base verb...?' pattern. This exercise helps learners master the word order for simple past questions while reinforcing the classic joke-telling format.
