Parts of Speech for Kids What is an Adverb

Parts of Speech for Kids: What is an Adverb? by Teaching Without Frills Parts of speech are different types of words we use when we speak and write. There are eight main parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. So what's an adverb? An adverb is word that describes verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs often help answer the questions "How?", "When?", "Where?", and "To what extent?". Let's look at some of the different types of adverbs and learn how we use them. Many adverbs describe verbs by telling how an action happens, like quickly running, peacefully sleeping, or talking loudly. Do you notice something about these three adverbs? yeah they all end in "l-y". Quick, peaceful, and loud are all adjectives that can describe nouns but when we want to describe verb we often add an "l-y" on the end to create an adverb. Can you think of some other adverbs that end in "l-y"? Adverbs can also describe when or how often something happens. These are words like now, then, tomorrow, always, never, and sometimes. We can use these words to describe verbs or adjectives like walking now or always happy. Can you think of any other adverbs that describe when or how often something happens? Adverbs can also answer the question "Where?" Words such as inside, outside, here, there, up, and down can be used as adverbs to tell where something happens like "look up" or "come here". Can you think of any other adverbs that can describe where something happens? Finally, we can use adverbs to answer "To what extent?" These are adverbs like barely, almost, very, and extremely. These adverbs can describe verbs like "almost crying" or they can modify adjectives like "extremely hot" or they can even describe other adverbs like "very quickly". Can you think of some other adverbs that might answer the question, "to what extent?"? Now let's see if you can find the adverbs in the following sentence: Yesterday, we very carefully planted pretty flowers outside. Here's hint: there are four adverbs in this sentence. Pause here to think, or keep watching to hear the answer. "Yesterday" is an adverb that tells when we planted the flowers. "Carefully" describes how we planted the flowers. "Very" describes to what extent we were careful. And "outside" describes where we planted the flowers. The word "pretty" is not an adverb. It's an adjective, because it describes noun, "flowers". So how can you use adverbs in your own writing? Listen to this boring sentence: The dog wagged his tail and jumped. Add some adverbs to this sentence to make it more detailed and interesting. Pause here to think, or keep watching for some ideas. There are many ways you could add adverbs to the sentence. You might say "The dog happily wagged his tail and jumped up and down." Or maybe, "The dog always wagged his tail and jumped excitedly." So remember, adverbs are words we use to describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. They help answer questions like "how?", "when?", "where?", and "to what extent?" You can use adverbs to make sentences more detailed and interesting. Check out the other videos in this series to learn more about different parts of speech! If you're teacher, you can find Teaching Without Frills on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TPT for related resources. Thanks for watching!