Teach This Lesson Tomorrow – Writing a Parody

Hi Folks!!

Hope everyone is well. My family has been plagued with the stomach bug for almost two weeks now. We are just starting to emerge from the haze and put ourselves back together again. (I’ve had to miss two days of school, and as you know, there is nothing worse than unplanned sick days when you are a teacher!) Phew!! It was a tough one. I can’t ever remember being THIS ready for spring to arrive!!

Anyway, I’ve got a quick one for you today, but trust me when I tell you that this lesson is a HOOT! This is second year that I’ve done this with my students and we all have such a blast.

The idea is for the students to write a parody of a song.

I start by showing Adele’s “Hello.”

Next, I show them this AMAZING parody done by third grade teacher, Mary Morris, from Tennessee.

Then, we discuss the meaning of “parody” (an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect) and I show BOTH videos again while we note the parts of the performance Mary Morris parodied.

Finally, the FUN part! The kids write and perform their own parodies! Now, you can allow them to select their own song, but in order to keep this lesson short (we spend three class periods total), I have them all use “Hello.”

For students who struggle with this, have them select a topic and then brainstorm some vocabulary associated with their topic. In the picture above, the girls wanted to do a song about softball, so they made a list of words that go with sport to help them while the compose.

Last year, each and every kid SANG their parody to the class! This year, only about half sang… the other half read theirs like they were at a poetry reading while the “Hello” instrumental music played in the background.

Unfortunately, I didn’t record our performances so I don’t have any to show you (blogger FAIL!!) and I don’t collect their papers because this is a speaking/listening grade (so I grade them on the spot while they perform). So, you are just going to have to trust me that this lesson is a blast! And it served as the perfect little “break” in between our compare/contrast and argument units 🙂

Let me know if you give this a try and how it works out! I’d love to hear from you!