The last stop on our parts of speech journey is adverbs types! Adverbs are usually the last part of speech that your child will learn in primary school. There’s a reason for that…they can be tricky! But don’t worry, I’m going to break them down for you, so you can easily explain adverbs to your child. Let’s transform parts of speech homework time from stressful to cool, calm and collected!
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What are adverbs?
Adverbs are words which describe a verb. Little recap on what a verb is, verbs are doing words. This means that adverbs describe how you do something. Ninety per cent of the time, adverbs will end in ‘ly’ which makes them easy to spot. For example, ‘The girl ran quickly in the race.’ The word ‘ran’ is the verb as it is what the girl is doing and the word ‘quickly’ describes how she ran. ‘Quickly’ is the adverb in this sentence and it ends in the letters ‘ly’ so it’s easy to spot!
However, this is not always the case, so your child needs to be on the lookout for those sneaky adverbs that don’t have ‘ly’ at the end! Let’s take a look at an adverb that doesn’t end in ‘ly.’ The bus arrived at the school late. The word ‘arrived’ is the verb as it is what the bus is doing and the word ‘late’ describes when the bus arrived. ‘Late’ is the adverb in this sentence but it doesn’t end in the letters ‘ly.’
Adverbs Types Definition:
There are five types of adverbs that your child will be working with throughout primary school. These are adverbs of time, manner, place, degree and frequency. Now your child won’t be asked to make a list of adverbs types. But it is good for them to know the different ways that adverbs will make an appearance and how they can be used. Let’s take a look at each of the types of adverbs with examples.
Adverbs Types: Manner
Adverbs of manner are the adverbs that your child will have experienced the most at this point in their educational journey. These are the adverbs that tell us how something is being done. They usually appear directly after the verb they are describing. For example, ‘The girl sings beautifully in the choir. The verb is ‘sings’ as it is what the girl is doing. How is she doing it? She is singing ‘beautifully’ which is an adverb. Adverbs of manner can also appear at the beginning of the sentence. An example of this would be, ‘Loudly, he crashed into the room.’ You can see that the verb in this sentence is ‘crashed.’ However, the adverb used to describe how he crashed into the room is ‘loudly’ and it is at the beginning of the sentence.
Adverbs Types: Time
The clue is in the name of this one. Adverbs of time are adverbs that are used to show what time or when an action happens. For example, ‘Yesterday, I walked around the park.’ In this sentence the verb is ‘walked’ and the adverb is ‘yesterday’ as this describes when the action or verb took place. Adverbs of time can show when, how long or how often a verb takes place. Some examples of adverbs of time are:
- Early
- Late
- Afterwards
- Before
- Today
- Eventually
- Always
- Often
- Regularly
Adverbs Types: Place
Adverbs of place are used to describe the location or where the action or verb happened. For example, ‘Spiders were crawling everywhere in the shed.’ The word ‘crawling’ is the verb as that is what the spiders are doing. The word ‘everywhere’ describes where they are crawling, which is everywhere! Yikes!
Adverbs Types: Degree
Adverbs of degree show the intensity or level of a verb that is taking place. Initially, your child might not think of these words as adverbs but they are. These types of adverbs are important for adding information about how something is done. For example, ‘The man talks extremely loud.’ ‘Talks’ is the verb and ‘extremely’ tells us how intense the volume is when he talks. By using the adverb ‘extremely’ to describe how the man talks, we can almost imagine the loudness of his voice!
Adverbs Types: Frequency
The last adverbs of types on our lists are adverbs of frequency and these bad boys are used to describe how often something happens. For example, ‘Sam is always late for school.’ The adverb ‘always’ tells us how often Sam is late for school, which is always!
Ways to use adverbs all types
There are a few ways in which your child can use adverbs types in their writing or speech. These are to change verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and clauses. Your child will be using adverbs this way without even thinking about it! But I just want to show you some adverbs types examples so you can help your child if they get confused or jumbled.
Change verbs
The most obvious way to use adverbs is to change verbs. The way which adverbs change verbs by describing how the action takes place. Rather than just saying, ‘The chef cooks,’ we can change the verb by adding an adverb. For example, ‘The chef cooks skillfully.’ The adverb ‘skillfully’ changes the verb ‘cooks,’ by showing us how the chef cooks. Some other examples of how adverbs modify verbs are:
- The athlete ran quickly.
- The lion stalked his prey stealthily.
- Carefully, the baker decorated the wedding cake.
Change adjectives
We can use adverbs to alter adjectives to show the intensity or magnitude of how something happens. Rather than just writing, ‘The cake is chocolatey,’ we can use an adverb to describe how chocolatey the cake is! For example, ‘The cake is extremely chocolatey.’ The adverb ‘extremely’ changes the adjective ‘chocolatey.’ Other examples of adverbs changing adjectives are:
- The weather is very stormy today.
- My sister’s eyes are a really bright shade of blue.
- The clown’s costume was surprisingly dull and plain.
Change other adverbs
By using adverbs to modify other adverbs, we can provide extra information about how, when, where or the intensity of an action. For example with the sentence, ‘The girl solves algebra equations quickly,’ we can see that the verb is ‘solves’ and the adverb is ‘quickly.’ However, we can show how quickly she solves the algebra equations by adding another adverb. ‘The girl solves algebra equations amazingly quickly.’ By adding the adverb ‘amazingly’ this emphasises to the reader how quickly she solved the algebra equation. Here are a couple of other examples of using adverbs to modify other adverbs:
- The runner trained very hard before the marathon.
- The man screamed extremely loud when he burnt his hand on the cooker.
- Painfully slowly, the cashier counted out my change in the shop.
Change clauses
Last but not least is using adverbs to change clauses. By doing this you can make the sentence more interesting or provide more information for the reader. Unfortunately, a clause has nothing to do with the big man in red, a clause is a sentence which includes a subject and a verb. For example, ‘Francesca got married last week in secret!’ This sentence contains a subject, ‘Francesca,’ this is who the sentence is about and a verb ‘married.’ Let’s change the clause by adding an adverb, ‘Interestingly, Francesca got married last week in secret!’ Here are some extra examples of using adverbs to change clauses:
- Actually, I really do eat carrots and broccoli.
- Fortunately, the man slammed on the brakes before he hit the red light.
- Regretfully, I did not buy a ticket for the concert this weekend.
Why do we need to use adverbs types?
Just like using adjectives, using adverbs different types brings a bit more detail and excitement into the things we say and the things we read or write. Adverbs allow us to describe how we do things and add more detail. Which sentence would you rather read, ‘The man ran,’ or ‘The man ran extremely fast?’ Which sentence allows you to imagine the man running in your head more?
Differences between Adverbs and Adjectives
This is where my students can get a bit confused with adverbs. Getting jumbled between adverbs and adjectives is a common thing, so don’t worry if your child is doing this. Let’s work together and help them distinguish between the two. Adverbs are used to describe a verb, a doing word or an action. Adverbs tell us how something is done. Adjectives, on the other hand, are used to describe nouns, persons, places or things. When completing adverb tasks, I always ask my students, ‘What is the verb?’ and ‘How is it being done?’ For example, with the sentence, ‘The cat climbed the tree skillfully.’ I first ask, ‘What is the verb? What is the cat doing?’ When they answer ‘climbed’ or ‘climbing,’ I then ask, ‘Ok, how are they climbing?’ And most of the time, they’ll be able to identify the adverb, ‘skillfully.’
Placing Adverbs
Before we look at where to place adverbs types, I want you to take a look at these two sentences which my business mentor, Tony Robbins likes to use during his seminars. ‘Jimmy bit the dog,’ and ‘The dog bit Jimmy.’ The same words are used in this sentence but by changing the order of the words, we are completely changing the meaning of the sentence.
The same goes for placing adverbs in a sentence. You can completely change the meaning of a sentence by putting an adverb in the wrong place. I find it useful to remind my students of this. Here is an example of how placing adverbs can change the meaning of a sentence. You can use these to show adverb placement to your child. ‘I almost knocked all the glasses over.’ This tells us that the glasses weren’t knocked over. Now let’s move the adverb ‘almost’ one word to the right, ‘I knocked almost all the glasses over.’ This tells us that some of the glasses were knocked over and some weren’t. The first sentence tells us that someone had a lucky escape and the second means we need to get the hoover out!
What will my child’s adverbs homework look like?
Now that you are super confident about adverbs, you won’t be panicked when they crop up in your child’s homework! To help you be even more prepared, I’ll show you some ways in which adverbs and their types may appear in your child’s homework. As always, just a reminder that all schools and teachers are different so your child could get a different adverbs homework.
Identify Adverbs
A common adverb homework is simply writing, colouring or circling adverbs in sentences. Most identifying adverbs in sentence worksheets also require the student to identify the verbs as well as the adverbs.
Here is an example:
Underline the verbs and circle the adverbs in the following sentences.
Max was training for a triathlon. To win the triathlon, Max will have to run quickly, cycle rapidly and swim skillfully. When he gets to the finish line of the last race, Max’s parents will be cheering excitedly for him.
In these sentences, the verbs are ‘training,’ ‘win,’ ‘run,’ ‘cycle,’ ‘swim’ and ‘cheering.’ The adverbs are ‘quickly,’ ‘rapidly,’ ‘skillfully’ and ‘excitedly.’ You will notice there are more verbs than adverbs in these sentences but that might not be the case each time.
Write sentences
Your child may be required to write their sentences using adverbs different types. They may be asked to write sentences about a particular topic or they might be asked to describe things they have done or how they do things.
At the weekend, I slept soundly and comfortably. In the morning I walked briskly around the park. I baked buns confidently with my new recipe in the afternoon. In the evening, I relaxed on the sofa and watched a movie happily.
The adverbs used in the sentences to describe my weekend are, ‘soundly,’ ‘briskly,’ ‘confidently’ and ‘happily.’
Comprehensions
Just like with nouns, verbs and adjectives, your child may be asked to identify adverbs in a comprehension. This is very popular with transfer test style comprehensions. Students can be asked to find adverbs in a piece of text. Alternatively, they can be given a word from the text and have to identify which part of speech the word is. Just a reminder, parts of speech mean nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Line 10: ‘The snow was falling rapidly and it was extremely cold.
The word ‘rapidly’ is used in line 10 of the text. Which part of speech is the word ‘rapidly?’
With this type of question, your child is required to go to line 10 and locate where the word ‘rapidly’ is. The placement of this word in the sentence will determine which part of speech it is. We can see that the word ‘rapidly’ is placed after the word ‘falling’ which tells us that ‘rapidly’ is an adverb.
How to teach your child adverbs and their types
There are lots of simple, fun ways that you can use to help teach your child adverbs. You can complete these activities together as a family or if you notice your child struggling with adverbs during homework time, take a break and complete one of these activities to support their learning.
Adverb Hunt
Go on an adverb hunt! This can be indoors or outdoors but personally, I think outdoors is best. Especially going to a park because there will be lots of things going on there. When you are walking through the park, look at your surroundings and what people are doing. Ask your child ‘How is that man running?’ ‘How are those children playing?’ or ‘How are the ducks swimming in the pond?’ You can use an Adverb Scavenger Hunt where your child has to tick off as many adverbs as they can. Or you could write your own adverb cards and ask your child to spot or act out as many as they can.
Adverb Charades
Adverb charades will bring some excitement to your Saturday night! These free adverb charade cards can be used to learn adverbs in a fun way. Each player will take turns to act out the adverbs while everyone else in the room has to guess what the adverb is!
Adverb Games
If your child is struggling with their adverb homework, stop what you are doing and grab an adverb game. When learning in a fun way, your child is subconsciously embedding knowledge into their brain. You can use interactive games, physical games or printable games to help teach your child adverbs. Here is a fun adverb game which sounds hilarious which you can buy on Amazon. Here is my affiliate link for the Somethingly game. If you don’t have access to any of the games above, grab some paper and make your own adverb charade cards, adverb bingo or snap cards.
Adverb Worksheets
Once your child has grasped adverbs, you can use some worksheets to solidify their knowledge of adverbs. Here are a few free adverbs worksheets which you can print and use at home.
- Adverb Worksheets
- Adjective to Adverb
- Adjectives and Adverbs – Digital and Printable Versions
- Adverb Worksheets and Charts
More Information on Adverbs
What Is an Adverb? Definition and Examples
5 Fun Activities for Teaching Adverbs in the Primary Grades
How To Teach Adverbs The Easy Way: An ESL Lesson Plan
Does your child need a recap on nouns, verbs or adjectives? Check out my other parts of speech blog posts here:
Nouns Different Types : 6 Essential Types of Nouns Your Brilliant Child Should Learn
6 effective, excellent ways to teach your child verbs and examples
How to teach your child adjective and examples using fun activities
And just like that, our part of speech journey is over! Now that doesn’t mean I never want to see you again! Quite the opposite! Make sure you keep coming back to check out what I’ve got coming up next! Use this blog post anytime your child gets confused or jumbled about adverbs types. Let’s create happy, confident learners together!
