Dancing with the Cars

Learning intention

I am learning to use a range of strategies when analysing how idioms, puns and wordplay are used to create humour in a text.

Success criteria

I can:

• identify and analyse examples of idiom and pun in a model text
• explain the connection between the use of idiom and/or pun and the creation of humour
• use comprehension strategies such as predicting, summarising, monitoring, and visualising

Essential knowledge

This learning resource loosely follows the Super Six literacy comprehension strategy. For more information about using the Super Six strategy, take a look at the Super Six Comprehension Strategiesungroup handout. View the English K-10 Syllabus Glossaryungroup for the definitions of the term idiom and pun.

Introduction

Predicting: Tell students that they are going to read a story about three chickens who tried to cross a busy road, only one makes it across without being hit by a car. Ask students to make some predictions about the text using the following prompts:

• Do you think this story will be happy or sad? Why?
• Do you think the story will be Funny or serious? Why?

Tell students the name of the play: ‘Dancing with the cars.’ Ask students whether this changes their predictions about the play – and if it does, why? Before students see the play and illustrations, read out the names of the characters from the character list:

• Mr Music
• Sylvie Silky (judge)
• Francine Frizzle (judge)
• Narney Barnevelder (judge)
• Adelaide Australorpe (dance contestant)
• Orla Orpington (dance contestant)
• Rory Rhode Island Red (dance contestant)
• Wayne Wyandotte (compere)
• Danni Dang Tao (host

Ask students what they notice about the names of the characters (Suggested answers: alliteration, the surname of each character is a type of chicken). Then draw students’ attention to the description of the character - for example ‘judge’ or ‘dance contestant’. Ask students to think again about their prediction of the story. Discuss the following questions:

• Do you think this story will be happy or sad? Why?
• Do you think the story will be funny or serious? Why?
• Have you changed your prediction from earlier? Why or why not?

Assign roles to nine volunteer students. The volunteer students are to stand at the front of the room to read their lines and perform actions (provided by stage directions).

Teacher modelling – 15 minutes

Summarising: Work with the class to create a summary of the story ‘Dancing with the Cars.’ on the board. Use the following sentence starters and ask for student contributions for each dot point:

• First
• Then
• But
• After that
• In the end

Discuss the following:

• What is the tone of the play? (Lighthearted, funny, silly)
• How is the tone created? (Through the use of word play)

Ensure students understand the following language devices from the English K-10 Syllabus Glossaryungroup:

• Idiom: A commonly used phrase or expression, usually figurative or non-literal, that has an understood meaning specific to a language or dialect. For example, over the moon, half asleep, pull your socks up.
• Pun: A figure of speech where there is a play on words, usually created through the use of a homonym or homophone. Puns rely on more than one meaning of a word to emphasise the point.

Draw the following table on the board and demonstrate to students how to refer to the text and locate examples of idioms and puns in the text. Place these in the table. Sample answers provided below:

Guided practice – 10 minutes

Monitoring: Use the first idiom as an example and explain its meaning followed by how it creates humour. Use the information below to help explain this.

Tell students that many of the idioms and puns in the story are connected with the idea of chickens and that this is because the characters in the story are chickens. This is a way of creating humour through playing with language and common ‘sayings’ and adapting them for this context when needed. Organise students into pairs and allow each pair to choose a different idiom from the list on the board to discuss and analyse. Teachers can provide differentiation by allocating the more difficult puns to more capable students. Pairs are to complete the table below with their example:

Bring the class back together to share their analysis. After this section of the lesson pause and ask students to complete a traffic light reflection on their learning by drawing a coloured dot on the top corner of their page to indicate their understanding of the following statement:

• I understand how the use of idioms helps make a text lighthearted and humourous.

Instruct students to:

• Mark a green dot in their workbooks if they fully agree with this statement
• Mark an orange dot in their workbooks if they mostly understand the use of idioms to create humour but they are still unclear on some areas
• Mark a red dot if they are unclear about idioms and would like additional support in this area.

Independent activity – 15 minutes

Visualisation: Remind students that a pun is a play on words, especially those that may have more than one meaning. Demonstrate the visualisation activity using the first pun from the list displayed on the board from earlier in the lesson: ‘a nice nest-egg’. Explain that a ‘nest-egg’ often refers to money in a savings account, tucked away for the future. In this story it refers to the prize for winning ‘Dancing with the Cars.’ Humour is created because chickens lay eggs in a nest, so there is a double meaning. Explain that if you were to create a visual representation of this pun, you could draw a bird-nest with lots of gold coins or cash in the nest. 

Instruct students to choose one pun from the play and complete the following tasks in their workbooks:

• Explain the meaning of the pun
• Describe how the pun connects with the character and plot of the story
• Create a drawing showing a visualisation of the pun

Display the drawings of the puns from the story around the classroom. Instruct students to complete a gallery walk and identify which pun is represented in each drawing.

Differentiation

For students requiring additional support in the independent activity, offer the following dot points and instruct the students to read these and then match them to the correct pun from the list. (The answer is ‘shake a tail feather’)

• This pun means move quickly, or go faster
• The pun connects to the story because it involves feathers. The characters in the story are chickens who are trying to quickly cross the road. These characters all have tail feathers.

Students can then create their own drawing of the pun.

Assessment

Complete an exit ticket using the 3-2-1 exit ticket formungroup from the digital learning selector.