Tulsa World: NIE - April Theme

April is National Humor Month
Humor improves vision. Things always look better after a good laugh.
- Larry Wilde

It’s tax season. It’s testing season. It’s allergy season. Newspaper in Education wanted to lighten up April. So we’re celebrating National Humor Month.

In 1976, Larry Wilde founded National Humor Month. Wilde, a best-selling humorist, published over 50 books. His books include numerous joke books, Great Comedians Talk About Comedy, When You're Up to Your Eyeballs in Alligators and Anatomy of An Illness. He was also a stand-up comedian, television actor, motivational speaker and director of the Carmel Institute of Humor. The California organization promotes the health benefits of humor.

Wilde created National Humor Month to “heighten public awareness on how the joy and therapeutic value of laughter can improve health, boost morale, increase communication skills and enrich the quality of one’s life” (www.larrywilde.com). In 2008, Steve Wilson, “Joyologist” and director of the World Laughter Tour, took over for Wilde.

How can you incorporate laughter in your classroom?

1. Visit the www.humormonth.com website where you can find a free downloadable pdf of 48 ways to use laughter as a teaching tool for writing, language arts and social studies. For example, one lesson asks students to collect and then alphabetize into a class book all the words students can think of that describe ways to laugh and smile.

2. Use the comics in the newspaper to teach a variety of subjects. Download this pdf for a collection of fun bell ringers that use the funnies.

4. Find more ideas at the comics in the classroom site: http://comicsintheclassroom.net/

3. Have students create their own comics and develop their computer skills at one of these sites:
http://www.readwritethink.org/MATERIALS/COMIC
http://www.stripcreator.com/make.php
http://ccproject.comicgenesis.com/

4. Create a comic initiative at your school or within your district similar to the one established in Maryland. For more information visit the Maryland Comic Book

Initiative: http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/recognitionpartnerships/md-comic-book

5. Scan our Comics Kingdom site at http://www.tulsaworld.com/site/games/comicskingdom.aspx for comics related to a recent lesson in your classroom.

6. Send your classroom’s favorite joke or your students’ original comics to nie@tulsaworld.com. At the end of the month, we will post our collection on the website.

7. Prepare your students for World Laugh Day. For more info visit http://www.laughterfoundation.org

8. JUST LAUGH!!!

9. Great Books for Humor:

The Golden Book of Jokes and Riddles
The Silly Riddle Book
Then I have poem books they are
The Earth is Painted Green
A Frog Inside My Hat
Take Me Out Of the Bathtub
Mary Had a Little Jam
Commotion in the Ocean
Anna's Garden Songs
Once Upon a Poem