Bring Laughter into Learning: Why You Should Add a Humour Unit to Your Homeschool Plan

Teaching high school English can feel heavy sometimes. Deep novels, dense literary analysis, serious essay writing. While these are important skills, teens also need space for creativity, playfulness, and understanding the lighter side of life.

That is why I created my brand-new Humour Unit, a fresh and engaging way to teach literary devices, critical thinking, and communication skills through laughter.

Why Teach Humour in High School?

Humour is not just about telling jokes. It is a powerful tool for:

• Understanding tone, voice, and audience

• Analysing rhetoric and persuasive writing

• Building emotional intelligence and coping skills

• Boosting creativity and confidence in writing and speaking

• Humour helps students see the humanity behind literature, making English feel more personal, relatable, and fun.

• Comedy is a skilled artform that utilizes many niche techniques and forms.

What's Included in the Wonder House Creative Humour Unit?

Here is what your teen will explore with the WHYC Humour Unit:

• Different types of humour, such as satire, parody, wit, irony, and more

• Social commentary through humour

• The writing and devices that go into humour writing such as satircal news, sketch comedy, stand up comedy, TV cold opens, etc

• The full length play by Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

• Humour as a coping mechanism in literature and life

• Fun, hands-on activities like creating memes, analysing stand-up comedy excerpts, and writing their own comedic pieces

• Engaging examples from contemporary comedians like Nate Bargatze, John Mulaney and Mindy Kaling

• Women in Comedy

• It is a complete package designed for middle and high school students.

• You can easily adapt it to fit your homeschool schedule.

How to Use This Unit in Your Homeschool

You can use the Humour Unit in a few different ways:

• As a stand-alone elective for 9-12 weeks

• Add "The Princess Bride Literary Deep Dive" to round out the Humour Course

• As a creative supplement alongside other English work

• As a break between heavier novels and essay units

Ready to bring a little more laughter into your homeschool?

You can purchase the Humour Unit HERE

✨ Bonus: If you grab my free Course Planner and Catalogue, you will see how you can easily build a full English course around units like this one. It is designed to take the stress out of planning.

While I think there is a place for dealing with heavy themes and "serious" works I also think that life is already hard and that building courses soley around these themes can drag our teens down. Many teens already deal with depression and anxiety and I think it's so important to bring lightness and laughter to their days. This unit does that.

It also doesn't shy away from hard topics. In the unit we look at the comedy special and interviews that John Mulaney did after going to rehab for drug addiction. We look at how humour can help us build resiliency. We look at various types of comedy that use humour to make social commentary. In getting this unit I believe you'll find that it tackles some of these serious topics in a way that uplifts people rather than depresses them. It's an academically rigorous course but I believe students will find that rigour a delight as the content is SO engaging!

Humour and laughter is such a massive part of our family culture and so many of these works are ones already highly recommended by my own teens. They are humour afficionados!