A Food Court Drama

Learning intention:

I am learning to consider context so that I can spell homophone words correctly.

Success criteria:

• I can identify homophones.
• I can use context clues to correctly spell a homophone word.
• I can use homophones to create humorous texts.

Prior to reading, show students the title A Food Court Drama and ask them to predict what the play is going to be about. Some students may assume it will take place in a food court at a shopping centre. Read the text as a class or listen to the audio recording. Ask students what a “food court” is in relation to A Food Court Drama (answer: a legal courtroom). Explain that this is a play on words. Ask students to find other examples of where the author has played on words in the text. (There are a wide range to choose from.)

Give the following joke: What does a vampire have to watch out for at a restaurant? A stake sandwich.

Ask students where the humour lies in the joke. Students should recognise that the steak/stake homophone (words that sounds the same but are spelt differently) has been used to give the answer two meanings. Explain that using a homophone is another way to create humour.

Brainstorm some words that are homophones, such as: there/their/they’re, where/wear, eye/I, see/sea, sight/site/cite, bored/board, bare/bear, hare/hair.

Ask students to focus specifically on food-related homophones and explain that they’ll be inserting a joke somewhere into A Food Court Drama. Some food-related homophones include:

Pair – pear

Court – caught

Knead – need

Piece – peace

Carrot – carat

Cereal – serial

Steak – stake

Meat – meet

Scent – sent – cent

Ate – eight

Sauce – source

Mussels – muscles

Instruct students to insert homophones into the play to produce a humorous effect. They can work in pairs.

Some examples:

Cook:                I’ll meet you later.

Vegetables:    You’ll what us later?

(meat/meet)

Cook:              Check out my mussels.

Judge:             You look pretty scrawny to me.

(mussels/muscles)

Cook:              We ate at eight, which seemed like the best time to dine.

(eight/ate)

Students share their answers with the class.