大象传媒

Welcome to Comedy Classroom for secondary schools

大象传媒 Comedy Classroom provides teachers with a brilliant framework for young people to explore comedy writing and develop key literacy skills. Focusing on comedy writing is a perfect match for secondary level core curriculum requirements and for teaching English across the UK.

As well as a series of three 60-minute teaching sequences, the 大象传媒 Comedy Classroom pack also contains top tips from comedians, comedy industry producers and writers.

By using the resources in the pack and online, you will be able to help students address key literacy outcomes which have been drawn from the National Curriculum in England, the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland, The Northern Ireland Curriculum and the Curriculum for Wales.

By using these resources your students will…

Communicate clearly and confidently with an audience and also through evaluating their own work and the work of others
Demonstrate the ability to gain, maintain and monitor the interest of an audience
Consider how texts can be changed to appeal to different audiences
Be able to assess the effectiveness of their own and others' writing and suggest improvements

All the activities and resources are designed to inspire you and your class or group to have fun with writing and to motivate students of all abilities. It really is designed to be flexible. Dip in and out of the Comedy Toolbox, put on your creative hat and encourage your pupils to ‘have a write laugh’ and start tickling those funny bones!

The resources are broken down in to 3 categories

Class Joker
Stand-up comedy – the writer performs words that put across their own particular view of the world

Class Act
Sketch comedy – the writer turns a funny idea into a scene that people can perform

Class Comic
Caption comedy – the writer looks at an image and creates a funny line to go with it

You can access lesson plans, student-facing slides, and 大象传媒 archive clips from this page.

Class Joker - Stand-up comedy

Students will write a comedy script and perform their stand-up routine. They will learn how to put across their own particular view of the world in their own words.

Download the lesson plan for stand-up comedy writing.
Download the student-facing slides to accompany the Class Joker lesson plan.
Use this Josh Widdicombe clip as part of the Class Joker lesson plan.
Watch some of the finest stand-up comedians deliver pitch perfect routines.
Comedian David Walliams offers some advice on writing stand-up comedy.

Students will script and perform a unique sketch. They will learn how to turn a funny idea into a scene that can be performed by more than one person.

Download the lesson plan for sketch comedy writing.
Download the student-facing slides to accompany the Class Act lesson plan.
Use this Mitchell & Webb sketch as part of the Class Act lesson plan.
Watch examples of sketch-writing for television.
Comedian David Walliams offers some advice on writing sketches.

Students will view the images and devise and write appropriate comedy captions in the spaces provided for each image.

Download the lesson plan for caption comedy writing.
Download the student-facing slides to accompany the Class Comic lesson plan.
Download the captions worksheet featuring images referred to in the lesson plan.
Comedian David Walliams offers some advice on creating captions.
This clip shows how parallel thinking can be effective in captioning.

Download this resource booklet which provides a series of three flexible 60-minute teaching sequences. It also contains top tips from comedy industry professionals to help students write the funniest routines, sketches and comedy captions that they can.
The Comedy Toolbox helps break comedy down into its separate literary components, helping students to create their own comedy using whichever tools they please.
The Comedy Glossary helps explain some of the terms often used in comedy writing.
View and download individual student-facing slides as JPEGs