The five Ws (what, when, where, why, who) plus an H (how) strategy can be used in a variety of ways. It is often used to help students summarise an article they read. It also helps them to organise their thinking and it can lead students to use a range of question types independently. It is also relevant to writing a newspaper article or a report.
The five 'W's (what, when, where, why, who) plus an 'H' (how) provide a strategy that is often used in news reporting in order to provide the audience with a quick overview of an event. It generally involves the following:
The benefits of Five Ws and an H
Developing higher order questions is a variation on the 5Ws and an H strategy in which students in small groups roll either one or two dice and form a question for their group to answer. On one cube write a question starter on each side. For example: How? Where? What? Why? When? Who? On the other cube write modal verbs such as: might, would, should, could, can, may, will. Using the teacher provided topic or text, students within each group take turns to roll the first dice and use the starters to form factual questions. Alternatively it can be made more difficult by requiring the students to roll both dice and to ask a question using both the question starter and the modal verb e.g. How could, who should.
Model this activity with the class first. Put the students into small groups. You will need to make 2 cubes for each group of students.
On one cube write a question starter on each side. For example: How? Where? What? Why? When? Who? On the other cube write modal verbs such as: might, would, should, could, can, may, will.
Using some of the brainstormed topics, students within each group take turns to roll the first dice and use the starters to form factual questions:
Students then roll the two dice and use the modal verbs to lift the level of the questions:
This video shows Five Ws and an H being used in a secondary classroom
Teaching and learning sequence planning examples
Primary level:
Secondary level:
Published on: 18 Dec 2017
