Learning to Laugh

Voice Box season is upon us and I am enjoying encouraging schools to be involved again this year. I am now settled in my new job back home in Northumberland and have spent time since the beginning of term encouraging my new schools to join in. I’ve presented at a few staff meetings over the last few weeks to share information about Voice Box and how staff can get their students involved. Prior to the staff meetings I created a resource sheet summarising what Voice Box is and the benefits of getting involved along with some information about how to support the children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN). I also used this opportunity to summarise what makes a joke funny and why this can be difficult for some of the children with SLCN. We discussed how to use the joke telling as a way of exploring vocab and also incorporating it into wider school events such as No Pens Day.

In a few weeks we are having an inter-campus final where the winners and runners up can tell their jokes on stage in front of an audience at one of the schools. Planning for this is going well and I have sent invite letters to local MPs to be on the judging panel.

I am really looking forward to seeing and hearing the winning jokes and hearing how each of the schools are getting on. It’s been lovely that a couple of people have contacted me about Voice Box following my article in Bulletin last month too. I always love hearing from other SLTs!

It’s not too late to get your school involved. Check out the Giving Voice website for the Voice Box toolkit and further information. Happy joke telling!

Tilly and Tom