When we are teaching the structure of adverbs (eg adding -ly to the adjective) it is sensible to give students exercises involving single words (or sets of words that have a common structure). In this way they can get practice in forming them correctly.

When we are teaching the use of adverbs, however, it is better to use activities that involve looking at adverbs in the context of whole texts (or at least small chunks of text or sentences). This way your pupils can better develop an understanding of the meaning of adverbs and how they function.

'How' adverbs are a common type of adverb. They frequently occur with doing verbs and reporting verbs, particularly in stories, recounts and instructions. They help us to picture the manner in which an action is carried out. A fun activity is to get your pupils to mime the actions as you read a familiar text out loud. They can do this as a class at their desks, or a small group could come to the front of the class to act out the story:

You could also take one sentence and keep changing the adverb. Your pupils would have to carry out the action in an appropriate way:

This demonstrates the function of the adverb and extends students' knowledge of a range of adverbs.

When they are reading a story, get your pupils to make a list of all the 'how', 'when' and 'where' adverbs they notice. This could become a wall-chart that students can refer to when they are writing their own stories.

Rather than beginning by teaching your students about 'adverbs', it might be more interesting to take a functional approach. That is, you could start by talking about 'words that tell us about how an action is done' or 'where an action happens' or 'when an action takes place'. If you want to use a functional term to describe these words you could call them how words, when words or where words (or for very advanced students, Circumstances). After students have had a chance to identify and become familiar with such words and phrases you could then tell them (if appropriate) that some are called adverbs (happily) or adverb groups (very happily), and others are called prepositional phrases (with a happy smile).