PLEASE HELP! Teaching at interview - year 4 adverbs!!

[midnightmoomoo]

Please help me!! I'm a returning teacher and have been invited for interview at my kids school which means not only teaching a half hour lesson, but having to do it in front of the head and deputy who I know well, and a class of kids who I will also know! No pressure then!

The brief is to teach a half hour lesson to a mixed ability year 4 class, on adverbs...........

any ideas very gratefully received!!!! thank you in advance, I'm SO nervous!!! x

[Cynderella]

I don't teach primary but having observed interview lessons, I would say that the important things are:

• clear objective - what are the kids learning, not just what are they doing
• activity that can be completed by all children in specified time so they have to get on with it quickly but even the least able can get something done in the time
• some way of checking that all children have understood and made progress (mini whiteboards, pair and share etc)
• use something you've used before or can practise beforehand so that you can focus on the children and not worry about the activity going wrong

If I was doing half an hour with Year 7, I would start with recognising adverbs and then using for a specific purpose such as characterisation. So you could write a paragraph without adverbs about Harry Potter and get them to suggest suitable adverbs (he smiled ... nervously) as a class and then get them to do the same for Malfoy or Snape. I'm sure primary teachers will have better ideas. Good luck anyway!

[Ihatespiders]

I've just done adverbs with my year 4s. It's a chance to get physical, if that suits your style.
The teacher walked into the classroom. (you walk across the room and to the door, then swing round and LEAP in) SUDDENLY the teacher walked into the classroom!
Creep about - Steathily, the teacher walked ....
Sternly..
etc, etc
Get a couple to whisper ideas to you to act out for the rest to guess.

Then have 2 sets of cards prepped - one set of simple verbs (sitting, dancing, eating, writing..) and one set of adverbs (quickly, angrily, carefully, loudly...) and get volunteers to choose a pair and act it out for the class to guess (dancing sleepily was a laugh!).

Keep reiterating which is the verb and and that the adverb tells us HOW it is being done.

Then give them verbs and adverbs to make into their own sentences.

Differentiation - more able to think of their own adverbs and verbs. Middle to think of own verbs. Support will need both given, perhaps on sheets with blanks to fill in. EAL - give pictures for the verbs.

Nice props if you have them - Rory's Story Cubes Actions set to generate random verbs. Good for small groups or on a visualiser.

What would you do for a longer leson? Experiment with placing the adverb in different positions of the sentence for different effect.
The teacher read the sentence slowly.
The teacher slowly read the sentence.
Slowly, the teacher read the sentence. NB the comma after the opening adverb.

[Ihatespiders]

Oh, and good luck!