Activity overview:

Students read a text as a class, which is displayed on an online

program called Free Kids Books. This text should reflect a unit of
work the class is working on or a text that is relevant to them. As
the class reads the texts, students point out adverbs and
prepositional phrases as they come across them. The teacher can
read the book out or the class can share the reading roles. Once
the book is finished, all of the words found will be displayed on the
board. The students then study these words and look what detail the
words provide, why they differ from each other and what they added
to the text.

Curriculum link:

LANGUAGE Year 4:
Understand how adverb groups/phrases and prepositional
phrases work in different ways to provide circumstantial
details about an
activity (ACELA1495)

Instructions for activity:

1. Students are focused onto the overhead projector where a story is
displayed from an online database called Free Kids Books. This book
should reflect a unit of work being studied in year 4 or something that
is relevant to the students.
2. The teacher can read the text out to the class or the students can
take turns of reading the text. During this process students are to call
out any adverbs or prepositional phrases they find which will also be
written on the board.
3. At the end of the story the teacher will discuss with students the
detail that the adverbs provided as opposed to the detail the
prepositional phrases provide. They will also as a class discuss why
and how the adverbials provide different information and what the
adverbials added to the text. The teacher can use questions and
examples from the book by taking out the adverb or prepositional
phrase and asking the students if the text still sounds the same and
provides enough detail.
4. As a further activity students could, in their table groups create a
poster on the letter they have been provided. Students are required to
think of as many adverbs and prepositional phrases that start with the
letter they have been given. The posters can then be returned to at a
later date when students have become more confident with adverbs
and prepositional phrases.

How activity supports curriculum link:

Students are required to read a text and locate adverbs and
prepositional phrases within the text. In order to do this, students need
to know what each adverbial is, what each adverbial provides and
remember the prompting questions they have spoken about in order to
locate and understand the detail each adverbial provides. By
participating in the discussion at the end of the book and comparing
the different words (adverbs and prepositional phrases found in the
book) the students are also visualizing how each adverbial provides
different information using real words and contexts.