The past year has been anything but a giggle for those who work in schools.

But everyone - including teachers - needs to laugh at work once in a while.

While humour can be a powerful teaching tool, sometimes it’s even funnier when students aren’t in on the joke - or they find your well-worn lines positively cringeworthy.

So what do you do to amuse yourself as a teacher that simultaneously annoys your students?

Teachers’ top classroom pranks

That was the question posted on social media website Reddit.com by a teacher who asked: “I don’t mean to be horrible to students, just [want to know] things that make them cringe but make you laugh?”

1. ‘Completing Facebook’

One teacher replied: “Whenever I get asked, ‘Sir, are you on TikTok/Facebook, etc?’ I always respond that I used to be but I’ve ‘completed it’ and so don’t play any more.

“This always gets them irate as the more they tell [me] that’s not how it works, the more I double-down claiming I’ve completed every level and unlocked all achievements. I also add that they obviously haven’t completed it as they clearly don’t know how to play it!”

Read: 11 annoying moments from remote learning

Comment: The bittersweet cost of being the ‘popular teacher’

Read: ‘Teaching Year 7 is great - if you do it well’

2. Silent-but-deadly

Another said: “When walking around the room checking they are all working, letting off a silent and potentially-deadly fart. Then watching them descend into madness trying to blame each other, while I’m safely at the other end of the room, free from blame.”

3. ‘The YouTube’

Another said: “I always act like I have no concept of technology culture. I always add ‘the’ before I say things like ‘YouTube’ or ‘TikTok’.”

See also: “hippity-hop”, “ticky-tocky”, “facetwit”, “snapbook”, “interwebs”, “book face”, “instant grannies”, “InstaChat”, “SnapGram” and “WhatsTok”.

4. Hanging cursor

Other habits included leaving a cursor in the middle of the screen, or the progress bar, during videos.

5. Misusing slang

Misusing phrases, such as telling students that “they aren’t being very yeet”, was also mentioned as a sure-fire way to make teenagers cringe.

6. #HashtagNo

Randomly inserting “#hashtag” before key words or instructions “makes them go ‘noooooo - stop it, Miss!’”, according to one teacher.

7. Using rhyming phrases

Phrases like “stick it in, or it goes in the bin” will “elicit a huge groan from Year 10”.

8. Turn the tables

Confiscating things from students and then using that thing in front of them is another teacher trick mentioned in the thread: “Fidget toys are the main one. Most of the time they find it a little funny.”

9. Outlandish lies

Another teacher said: “This is going to sound bad, but I actually really enjoy telling them incredibly outlandish lies that they believe because they’re young, knowing they’ll go home and tell parents that will either assume they’ve misheard or know I’m winding them up.

“These include: Convincing a class that I was over 80 years old. Telling another class that I was actually just a really big 14-year-old…[that] I used to be a cowboy….[that] I commuted from Italy every day (by bus)…[and that] The Muppets are real and that Beaker lives down the same street as me.”

10. Fake holiday

Another said: “Dumb lies are the best. I told a group of Year 10s that we have a bank holiday in May ‘cause it’s Russian New Year’.”