Teaching Adverbs: Part 2

I've been very MIA for the last few weeks! Since I'm on a year round schedule, I've been preparing to go off track. Man, it is a lot of work! I aspect extra time packing up my classroom is an organized fashion so I can find my things easily in June, on top of report cards, parent meetings,  parties, and student awards.  Not complaining now since I am done and on break! 

Before we went off track, I was working furiously on adverbs with my students. We first started with sorting different types of adverbs. (You can check out my post about the process here). Next I decided to put my theater training into action. 

I wrote a sentence up on the board with a blank space for an adverb. For example, I finished my homework__________. At first, I wrote in the adverbs, focusing on where and when adverbs, the tricky ones. (I finished my homework yesterday/I finished my homework today or I slept outside/I slept inside). Then I asked students to come up and act out the sentences. How would a student look if they finished their homework yesterday (calm perhaps) vs today (frazzled)? What would sleeping inside look like vs outside? 

Once they got the idea, I allowed students to come up with their own adverbs, focusing on the slightly easier "how" adverbs. I wrote the sentence: The student danced _________. I asked for student volunteers to fill in the sentence and then I had the entire class act out the sentence.  I wish I had pictures, because they were hilarious! Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard and forgot to grab the camera.

To wrap up, I asked students how adverbs changed the meaning of the sentences. What did they notice? Since we have been working on using details in our writing, many students made the connection to our writing goals and the lesson (yay). Others just enjoyed thinking about how much fun language can be.

Does anyone else have a good strategy for teaching adverbs or parts of speech in general?