As colleges, universities, and schools move to offer more classes in the popular online format, both teachers and students should be aware of what may be absent in class: the routine benefits of humor. For years, student surveys on the characteristics of the most effective teachers routinely have placed humor as one of the top five traits (Hart…

This article discusses the importance of humor and how it helps to understand children's thinking from birth to 6 years. The article presents three sections describing how a young child's sense of humor reveals much about the way he thinks. The first section is entitled "Giggles!" written by Carla Poole. Intended for babies from birth to 2, Poole…

This study aimed to investigate the explanations of 80 kindergarten children on pictorial humor. The children were asked to observe and describe a specific visual stimulus, and say whether they considered it as funny providing their rationale. The study was developed on the basis of humor being an incongruity thus the data were examined against…

This article presents several units from a course on German Humor offered at Washington University in St. Louis in the Spring of 2003 and 2006. The course was constructed according to the principles of the task-based classroom outlined by James Lee and employed at Georgetown University. The emphasis in each of the four units, which address East…

For fifteen years, the presenter has engaged college students in discussions and writing assignments that pertain to the outstanding characteristics of their most effective teachers--"effective" meaning that these teachers made the most significant impact on their lives. Based on those recurring themes, the conclusion is that effective teachers…

On a daily basis, American television and radio audiences are subjected to a stream of broadcast Public Service Announcements (PSAs), each promoting "some kind of social or economic action deemed beneficial" (Stridsberg, 1977). Often, these announcements employ humor as a presentational device to help stimulate the behavioral change…

This proceedings contains half of the papers presented at the third annual conference of the Association of Teachers of English Grammar. Papers in the proceedings are: "Grammar as a Method, Not as a Subject" (Marilyn N. Silva); "Using Humor to Teach Grammar, or the Grammarian as Stand-up Comic" (Frank Peters); "Grammatical…

A study focused on investigating perceptions of sexist humor, specifically on how people perceive others' reactions to sexist humor. Subjects, 206 college men and women, rated communication competence and attraction of actors in vignettes depicting 2 different reactions to sexist humor. Results indicated that sex of both the joke teller and the…

This paper examines linkages between educational philosophy and classroom activities and presents 10 guidelines for early childhood teachers and administrators to effectively strengthen these linkages. The 10 guidelines are: (1) each child has a capacity to respond to what the teacher brings to the classroom; (2) educators need to open the world…

Deliberately writing badly can be an effective way to learn to write better because knowing when writing is bad is an essential element in knowing when it's good. There are distinct advantages to encouraging students to learn the rules by breaking them. Deliberately doing it wrong removes the threat of failure. Students are playing; they are…

A speech communication professor informs his students of implicit classroom rules by using a humorous handout. Now and then, the professor elaborates on items in class using stories of classroom encounters that led to the handout's creation. Some of these "tongue-in-cheek" rules (there are 22 in all) are: (1) try to arrive at class a few…

Several points need to be addressed when selecting humorous books for children. First, people of all ages react to humor in different ways; therefore, what one child finds funny another may not. Care must therefore be taken in sharing books with and recommending books for children. Second, humor itself is difficult to define, but humor should…

A study investigated the hypotheses that: (1) people from different language backgrounds would differ in the jokes they found funny; and (2) the differences would be related to culture rather than lack of vocabulary. A questionnaire with 30 jokes was presented to 51 English teachers from a wide variety of countries and 11 native English-speakers.…

Because of the historical influence of religion in the national life and personal lives of many American citizens and the interplay between religious and national affairs in public discourse, it is useful to study the secular media for its portrayal of religion as news or as value system. A study describes the nature of commentary on religion by…

Highlighting pertinent research in the area of young children's development of humor, this paper reviews four areas from a cognitive-developmental perspective: (1) humor as a cognitive process, (2) humor and the developmental process, (3) research on young children's humor, and (4) humor and early childhood education. First, the structural…