Adverbs are used to communicate additional information and are generally used to answer the questions "how," "why," "where," "when," and "to what extent?" To help reinforce this lesson, write a sentence on the board that lacks an adverb that could answer one of these questions and then ask your students to suggest an adverb. For example, you could write the sentence "The dog ran through the house." Ask the class to suggest an adverb to describe how the dog ran through the house, such as "quickly" or "slowly." If this is one of your first adverb lessons, your students may have an easier time if you tell them what question you want the adverb to address, such as "how?" or "to what extent?" This lesson can also show students how many adverbs end in "ly."
Once students have an idea about some of the basic tenets behind adverbs, they can begin to learn how to use them. One way to do this is to have a fill-in-the-blank exercise that has the students complete different jokes with the appropriate adverb from a bank of adverbs at the top of the page. For example, the joke "Why should you hope the rain keeps up?" "So that it doesn't come ______" can be completed with the adverb "down."
Another lesson you can use is presenting the students with a series of sentences that contain adverbs. Asking the students to circle the adverb in each sentence as well as identify what question the adverb is answering will help them learn how adverbs are used. This also will drill home the concept that adverbs are used to answer "how," "where," "when," "why," and "to what extent."
Once students have become comfortable identifying adverbs on their own, its time to put a student or two on the spot. Have a student come to the front of the class to play an adverb version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" You can have your questions ask students to identify adverbs in a sentence, tell you what question the adverb is answering, or completing a sentence with an adverb. For the more difficult questions, you can offer as a wrong answer an adjective that may trip the student up, such as "good" when the correct answer would be "well." Students may be given lifelines and to encourage the support of the class, class-wide prizes or benefits, such as extra credit or bonus recess time, can be awarded based on how well the "contestant" does.