Teachers' notes
Playing with words
Aims:
- To understand what an adverb is and what an adjective is.
- To identify adjectives and adverbs in sentences.
- To understand how adjectives and adverbs are used for effect in sentences.
- To construct their own sentences using adjectives and adverbs.
- To build an extended piece of writing using adverbs and adjectives.
Age group 7–9
- England and Wales
Year 3/Year 5 - Scotland
Year P4/Year P5 - Northern Ireland
Year 4/Year 6
Literacy skills:
Select and use a range of technical and descriptive vocabulary; explore how different texts appeal to readers using varied sentence structures and descriptive language; compose sentences using adjectives, verbs and nouns for precision, clarity and impact.
Curriculum links:
- English – England and Wales
- Language and literacy – Northern Ireland
- Literacy and English – Scotland
Content:
- Interactive whiteboard: Discuss with the children first what they know about adverbs and adjectives. Give them some examples and/or ask them to share some examples of sentences with an adverb or adjective in them. Read the fictional passage on screen 1. Ask the children to identify adjectives and adverbs with the highlighters. To help reinforce their learning they could explain why they have highlighted certain words to a partner or teacher. Discuss the purpose of the adverbs and adjectives.
Read the sentences in the table on screen 2. Ask students to construct their own sentences based on the information given. To differentiate, it may be necessary to work through one or two of the examples together with the class first. - Activity sheets: Challenge the children to find the adjectives and adverbs described. For the second task, the children could work in pairs to create advertisements. Pictures of objects could be placed in a hat and the children could select an image to use for their advert. To support younger children or those less familiar with creating adverts, examples of newspaper or magazine adverts could be shown, and the common features of these could be explored together. Children who would benefit from further extension could be asked to think about the purpose of their advert, who they are targeting and what message they are trying to get across.
- Extension: The children could share their adverts with the class. They could be ecouraged to explain how they have used adjectives and adverbs to advertise their products. Look at other readers or stories that use descriptive language, for example ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes.
Suggestions for questions:
- Activate prior knowledge: Can you think of words to describe your brother/sister/ best friend? What is the difference between an adverb and an adjective?
- Reflect on learning: Did anybody notice which kinds of texts use more adjectives and which use more adverbs? What is missing without these words? What do they add to a piece of text?
- Extension: Make a display of newspaper and magazine headings and articles with adverbs and adjectives annotated and highlighted. Read ‘The Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll and see if you can identify which words are adjectives and which are adverbs.