Buy a book of suitable jokes and tear the pages out. Give each of your students a page and then divide the class into groups of four. Have each student choose a joke and then work as a group to figure out how to string all four jokes together in a conversation among themselves. Each group performs their “conversation” in front of the class.

After all the conversations are performed, hold a discussion about how humor is used in different situation, e.g. conversations, standup comedy, public speaking, etc.

Show the TV program  - Be Sincere, Be Brief, Be Seated: Public Speaking 
 

This exercise is designed to demonstrate how humor can be used to keep an audience interested while the speaker gets his or her message across. Using the cut up joke book, give the students pages that have jokes about the same topic, e.g. advertising, driving, parents, unemployment, thanksgiving, etc. Assign a two-minute speech about the topic. Students may use a joke in the introduction, one in the body of the speech, and one in the conclusion. The rest of the speech must be a story or factual information about the subject. 

This lesson can be used to introduce public speaking to a class or as an introduction to using humor in speeches. The concepts of introduction, body, and conclusion of a speech need to be either discussed or understood by the class. 

• If this is an introduction to public speaking, encourage the students to tell something about their own life experiences as they relate to the topic. 

• If this is used as an introduction to using humor in speeches, have the students research and use factual information about the subject.