What's so Punny? [Using shirt slogans to teach puns]

I realize that when you tell a joke and it fails miserably at garnering any laughs, it can kill any humor the joke possessed to attempt to explain it.  I've noticed, though, that some students find it fun to hunt down examples of puns or idioms in speech.  And talking about the jokes can be extremely helpful for English language learners that need to digest multiple meanings of words or phrases.  Entire messages are flying over their heads, and they are so eager to understand the message being conveyed not just the words themselves.

Puns are used often in newspapers and headlines, so they're readily available to find.  But with an older set of students, I also like to use those cheeky t-shirt slogans to get kids thinking about how playful our language is. 

These examples below are t-shirts from the Mental Floss store and Busted Tees, but these kinds of tees abound everywhere.  Please note that there is some adult humor and crude language on the external sites.  Preview and only share the messages and shirt images with those of an appropriate age and maturity.

Sorry the image below is so large, but I wanted y'all to see and be able to read the dang shirts.

Obviously, so many of the shirts play off puns,  but I think it helps when kids can understand that English lit terms aren't just something for English class.  Word play can be in any subject.

I also wanted to include the rebus puzzle of the Pillow Fight because comics and illustrations for idioms are powerful tools too.  For more rebus puzzles, I like these here and here (very basic puzzles with hints to get kids started).

And I liked the "Boston is Wiked Awful" shirt to address slang and how language is always changing meaning. I like this lesson plan from National Geographic for beginning a look into slang (in the US and abroad), and this plan from The New York Times is really great too.  I think they'd both appeal to older students.

But back to puns and wordplay and using these tees as examples of the literary terms, I created some cards that have the images on the front and dry erase material on the back, so the student must determine what makes the shirt humorous and write the reasoning on the back

Hopefully I don't kill comedy by having the kids analyze the humor. ;)

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