Teaching demo: Teaching language through content

Teaching Demo: Teaching language through content
Content focus: Irony
Grade level: 9th or 10th grade

1. Write objectives on the board.
Content objective: Identify what’s ironic and what’s not. Identify types of irony.
Language objective: Identify language people use to talk about irony; Notice use of tenses to express telling a story/commenting on it.

2. Go over objectives.

3. ‘Remind’ the students that they have been learning about irony in their Literature class. —Here, we are going to continue that discussion in English.

4. Give out the handout listing three traditional forms of irony.

5. Have a student read the first type. Restate it. Check to see if the students understand.

6. Repeat with the second two forms.

7. Hand out the lyrics to a song in which the singer is giving examples of what she thinks is irony. Ask if anyone has heard this song before. (If most students have heard it before, you will only need to listen/watch once. If many haven't heard it, repeat it twice below.)

8. Instruct the students to watch/listen to the video as they look at the lyrics. Begin to notice where the examples of irony are. Note them if you can while listening.

9. Play video.
Alanis Morissette – Ironic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v9yUVgrmPY

10. Assign partners. Circle all the individual examples that the singer is using to talk about irony. Then analyze each one. Can you identify any of the types of irony with any of them?

11. Check in with students. Did they find true examples of irony? Discuss. (Most of the examples are NOT irony--just bad luck.)

12. State that the song switches back and forth in tenses. Why? What does this tell us?

13. Now, identify three sentences that English speakers use in everyday speech in the song to talk about irony.

Homework: You can choose one of the following for your homework. Either compose a letter to Alanis explaining what she doesn’t seem to know about irony OR rewrite the song so that it DOES contain instances of irony.

Handout for lyrics:
Alanis Morissette - Ironic lyrics
An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic... don't you think?
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought? It figures!
Mr. Play-It-Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think?
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face
It's a traffic jam when you're already late
It's a ‘No Smoking’ sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic... don't you think?
A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...
Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out