Pariendo Chistes: ¡¿Who Knew Homophones Could Be So Funny?!
By Mitch D. Ingram
“Se nos nació” as we say in Spanish. It was just born, naturally, out of the activity that we were doing about homophones in class. One of my favorite go-to assignments every spring as a bilingual elementary teacher for 14 years was the beloved “Homophone Booklet.” The state standards required our third graders to “identify, use, and explain the meaning of antonyms, synonyms, idioms, homophones, and homographs in a text” and it was always a wonderful time (Texas Education Agency, n.d.). As I opened the lesson at the beginning of the week, students and I would enjoy an engaging discussion about the meaning of the word “homophone” (Gr.”homo,” same; “phōn,” sound). We shared several examples, in both Spanish and English, and I wrote them on the board accompanied with a simple sketch to illustrate their ideas about how something that sounds the same can be so different.
When I felt confident that the English language learners were understanding the concept by comprehension checking in Spanish and English, I asked my “Paper Passer to distribute five sheets of unlined paper to each student. In classic Dinah Zike (2002) fashion, I walked students step by step through how to align the corners up carefully and fold the pages together “hamburger style” (a.k.a. “taco style,” according to my students:^). We creased the paper as I went around the room with the stapler and students bubbled with excitement about how five common pieces of paper were suddenly transformed into their own personal libreta (booklet).
Example of the Homophone Booklet foldable
The first fun order of business, of course, was to decorate the cover, which included their title, name, date and the student-friendly definition of homophone—"words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings.” I then provided them with the list of homophones in English provided to us by the district (see below). The assignment was quite simple: students would divide the page into two with a horizontal line and write the pair of homophones on the top of the section (e.g., “see” and “sea”). They would then write a sentence using each word and draw an accompanying picture. For example, “I can see with my eyes,” and “The sea contains a great amount of water.”
Sample list of homophones used to make booklets
And off they went. Students busily working independently, asking stellar questions about the meaning of a not-so-common word (e.g. hare) as they wrote out sentences and drew and colored pictures. Folding 5 pieces of paper together allows for 18 different sets of homophones (not including the front and back “cover” of the booklet), so they were being exposed to several different sets of homophones in English. This assignment took a couple of days and was the perfect activity for them to work on while I was with small groups around the kidney table.
Se nos nació. Interestingly, as students interacted more with the homophones, I noticed that students began playing with the words. They would laughingly say things to each other like, “That was a good (k)night.” or “I (eye) can see you!” They were in the beginning stages of creating jokes! While they were very simple, “A hare has furry hair!” they were still making metalinguistic connections that was fueled by humor, as I have discussed elsewhere (Ingram, 2023).
Along with classroom responsibilities that the students enjoy doing in our classroom, such as Line Leader, Door Holder, Caboose, Line Monitor, Paper Passer, Secretary and others, we also came up with the role of Comediante [Comedian]. The comediante would share a riddle from a book that a visiting teacher from Spain gave me or from jokes that I downloaded from the internet. The format was a few easy steps. The comediante asked the question of the joke and called on students raising their hands to guess the answer. After a few minutes transpired, the comediante would repeat the joke and give the answers. The students laughed (whether they understood the joke or not), but then the comediante would ask the final question, “What made this joke funny?” to which the students would explain some form of double meaning, often expressed through a homophone. Because of this, after we did our homophone booklets, students were hyperaware of the meanings of the words that sounded alike. The classic joke in English that I still hear students enjoy telling in elementary schools is:
Question: Why was 6 afraid of 7?
Answer: Because 7 ate (8) nine.
In Spanish, a common one that students continue to tell me in bilingual classrooms is:
Question: ¿Cuál es el baile favorito del tomate?
[What is a tomato’s favorite dance?]
Answer: ¡La Salsa! [Salsa/spicy sauce]
Because Spanish has less variation in its system of spelling (transparent orthography), many of the jokes in Spanish are not homophones (same sounds, different spellings, different meanings), but homographs (same sounds, same spellings, different meanings). Salsa is spelled the same but means both the tasty sauce we all love and the infectious genre of music/dance.
Since laughter was such an important element to our classroom, the English language learners were quick to find word(s) that made the joke make sense, which were often homophones (like “ate” and “eight”). Every word that had a possible double meaning, the students were on top of. Once, while working through a math problem on a practice STAAR test, a student proudly pointed out that the “ear” of corn in the word problem sounded like what he was pointing to on the side of his head—his ear.
Homophones have great possibilities in any language! As you teach your students the concept, connect it to something relationally powerful like humor. Whether they are billed as jokes (chistes), riddles (adivinanzas/acertijos), puns (juegos de palabras/doble sentido), or just fun (diversión), these words open up terrific possibilities for English language learners to become aware of the language they use as laughter is born and learning ensues!
Resources
References
Ingram, Mitch. "A (dis) play on words: Emergent bilingual students’ use of verbal jocularity as a channel of the translanguaging corriente." Linguistics and Education 74 (2023): 101165.
Zike, Dinah. "Teaching mathematics with foldables." New York, New York: Glencoe McGraw Hill (2002). Available online here: https://mcssta13mathtools.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/1/0/22104466/math_foldables.pdf
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Dr. Mitch Ingram is an Assistant Professor in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at Texas State University. Drawing from 25 years’ experience as a bilingual educator, his research builds on linguistic and cultural strengths of bilingual students, teachers, and families for shared successes. |