How to teach WH Questions (Who, What, Where, Why, When How) (2024)

FAQs

How to teach who, what, when, where, and why? ›

Use role-playing scenarios, real-life situations, and interactive games to make learning enjoyable. Include 'Wh questions' in activities that make sense and are related to everyday life. This helps learners understand the questions better and remember them because they can link them to real-life situations.

If your child is struggling with this, you can offer choices or show pictures of people that they can choose from. Keep working on this until they understand that “who = person”. They should be responding with a person, if they don't always get the person correct.

Forming wh-questions

We usually form wh-questions with wh- + an auxiliary verb (be, do or have) + subject + main verb or with wh- + a modal verb + subject + main verb: Be: When are you leaving?

Use teaching ideas such as think, pair, share or snowballing at key points for 'big' questions. Ask the question, move to another part of the room and repeat it before taking any answers. Set a timer, or ask a student to time the wait time. Play some thinking music.

Almost every question you ask will begin with one of these words! Through asking who, what, when, where and why, we can gain a pretty comprehensive understanding of how an event happened or occurred.

Introduce the five Ws (who, what, where, when and how) to the class and discuss why these are important to ask of any text, informational or literary. Tell a familiar fairy tale like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to illustrate examples of each of the five questions.

Starting to ask and answer 'Wh-' questions is a milestone that most children start to reach between the age of 1 and 2 years, and they'll continue to develop their receptive and expressive language in the lead up to school.

An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as what, which, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, whether and how. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most of them start with wh- (compare Five Ws).

Closed-ended questions are the "who, what, when, where, why" questions that help you collect specific facts about a situation.

Effective short answer questions should provide students with a focus (types of thinking and content) to use in their response. Avoid indeterminate, vague questions that are open to numerous and/or subjective interpretations. Select verbs that match the intended learning outcome and direct students in their thinking.

Is there a rule for using WH? ›

Here's a useful tip: if it's a question word beginning with 'w-', then it's spelt with 'wh-'. For example: 'what?' , 'where?'

These words are often used when we want to request information from someone. The most common Wh- question words in English are: “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” “which,” “whose,” and “how.”

It may be interesting to see how many students used to do certain activities or behave in certain ways. Next have students think of some other “used to” sentences that apply to them. You can have students volunteer to read sentences aloud to the class or work in groups to discuss the different sentences.

Open it up. If you want something more than a yes or no answer, take a closed question and open it up by starting the question with words like What, Why, or How. So instead of asking Have things changed since last year?, better to ask: How have things changed since last year?

Create sentence cards with a mix of declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. Divide the class into small groups and give each group a set of cards. Challenge the students to sort the sentences into the correct categories as quickly as possible.