ACTING OUT ADVERBS . . . BUT WHAT ABOUT ADJECTIVES?

 

Georgia Standards

 

South Carolina Standards

 

Key Vocabulary

 

Materials

Possibly, a whiteboard for brainstorming ideas

 

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

• Explain that students will be acting out different things in today’s lesson.  Remind them that when acting things out, it is important to stay safe.  Have students each make a ‘space ball’ around themselves. Model and have students follow blowing up a bubble to become the space ball.  Spread it out to the sides, to the front and back, and up above.  Remind them to be careful – not to break or burst the space ball.  Explain that this is the student’s acting space, and that they must not crash their bubbles into one another. They have to keep safe in order to participate.

• Give students a series of prompts alternating between nouns modified by adjectives and verbs modified by adverbs, such as:
• become a tall pine tree
• act out running fast
• be a cold ice cream cone
• toss a ball in the air wildly
• be an interesting book
• play an instrument gracefully
• be a lonely dog
• eat ice cream joyfully
• be a dirty baseball
• sway gently in the wind
• be a loud tuba
• read a book excitedly

Ask students to recall which prompts were easier to do and which were more challenging.  If necessary, review the list.  Ask them to explain what made the actions easier or harder to do.  Elicit, and/or guide them to the notion that words that told how to do something might have made it easier to act out the idea.

 

Work Session

• Define or review adjectives and adverbs.  Review the list of prompts to identify adjectives and adverbs.  Use them as examples to reinforce the definitions of adjectives and adverbs.
• Define or review pantomime – pretending to hold, touch or use something you are not really holding, touching or using; in the theatrical tradition, acting without words.
• Lead students in simple pantomime activities, such as eating an apple or swinging a baseball bat.  Model for them and instruct them in using careful precise movements, slightly exaggerated, and including their faces and eye focus.
• Then adapt those activities by adding adjectives and adverbs.  E.g., eat a red (soft, sour) apple and swing a wooden (long, heavy) baseball bat, and then eat an apple quickly (furiously, disgustedly) and swing a baseball bat powerfully (awkwardly, carelessly).  Reflect on the ease or difficulty of showing the adjectives and the adverbs.  Ask: why is it easier to act out actions that involve adverbs?  (Because adverbs often tell us how to do things, while adjectives often only tell us what a thing is like.)  Remind students that this reflects the difference between nouns and verbs – nouns are things, but verbs often imply action, and by definition action is easier to act out.
• Have students pair up.  Have pairs decide on an action that can be pantomimed, involving an object of some sort.  (They can choose actions involving food, sports, school, music, art, the outdoors, chores, etc.).  Have them develop a pantomime for their activity.  Remind them that pantomime should involve precise and detailed movements, be slightly exaggerated, and engage the face and eyes as well as the body.
• Have each pair show another pair what they developed.
• Have them next add adjectives.  Remind them that adjectives modify nouns – describing the person, place or thing they are enacting.  If appropriate, brainstorm categories of adjectives (size, shape, color, taste, etc.) or even specific adjectives (gigantic, slow, loud, pink, striped, round, etc.).
• Have them rework their pantomimes trying to reflect the added adjective.
• Have each pair show another pair what their pantomime looks like, and discuss the changes they made.
• Have them next add adverbs.  Remind them that adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.  Instruct them to use an adverb to modify the verb of their pantomime – describing the way the action is to be enacted.  Remind them that adverbs usually (but not always) end in ‘-ly.’  If appropriate, brainstorm categories of adverbs (speed, emotion, effort, etc.) or even specific adverbs (sadly, rapidly, angrily, recklessly, carefully, grumpily, etc.)
• Have each pair show another pair what their pantomime looks like, and discuss the changes they made.
• Possibly, have pairs volunteer to share their pantomimes with the class.

Extension:  Have students fold a piece of paper in half, and on one side draw a picture of their phrase with an adjective, and on the other a picture of their pantomime phrase with an adverb.  Reflect on how, when drawing, the adjective is likelier easier to convey than the adverb.

Classroom Tip:  This lesson will have to be carefully delivered so as not to further confuse students. Using adjectives and adverbs can help us to better act out a phrase.  But adverbs, because they focus on the action word. are easier to act out than the adjectives.  Therefore, ‘actability’ might be one test we use to determine if a word is an adjective or an adverb.

Closing Reflection

Ask students to restate the definitions of adjectives and adverbs.

Ask students which were easier to act out – adjectives or adverbs – and why.

Ask students to reflect on how they used their bodies (hands, arms, legs, full bodies, faces, eyes) through pantomime to act out their chosen phrases.

 

Assessments

Formative

• Students should be able to correctly differentiate between adjectives and adverbs.
• Students should be able to correctly provide examples of adjectives and adverbs.
• Students should participate in the pantomime exercise while maintaining control of their bodies and personal space.

 

Summative

Assign various addition problems to the students at the level reflected in the lesson, and gauge their ability to visualize and complete the problems.

 

DIFFERENTIATION

Acceleration:

• Have pairs develop pantomimes of several adjectives and several adverbs
• Ask students to describe which types of adjectives and adverbs are easier or harder to convey through pantomime (e.g., color and texture might be hard; speed and emotion might be easy).

Remediation: 

• Model several sequences together
• Do more brainstorming and record the brainstormed ideas on the whiteboard
• Rather than having students work in pairs, take student ideas but have the class develop the pantomimes all together

 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Hairy, Scary, Ordinary:  What is an Adjective?, by Brian P. Cleary Quirky, Jerky, Extra Perky:  More About Adjectives, by Brian P. Cleary Many Luscious Lollipops, A Book About Adjectives, by Ruth Heller If You Were an Adjective, by Michael Dahl Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely: What Is an Adverb?, by Brian P. Cleary Lazily, Crazily, Just a Bit Nasally:  A Book About Adverbs, by Brian P. Cleary Up, Up and Away:  A Book About Adverbs, by Ruth Heller Suddenly Alligator:  An Adverbial Tale, by Rick Walton

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

Ideas contributed by: Mary Gagliardi and updated by Barry Stewart Mann

Revised and copyright:  August 2022 @ ArtsNOW