Differentiating between the Types of WH Questions
Do your students struggle to understand the different types of WH Questions? Such as “who” questions will be answered with a person and “where” questions with a place? Many speech therapy students who have a language impairment have difficulty with this skill.
Here are some resources to help you teach the different types of WH Questions and practice the skill!
Types of WH Questions Chart
To initially teach the different types of WH Questions (and then later to use as a prompt), I find this one-page visual chart really useful! You can grab it for free here!
Sorting WH Questions
After introducing the types of WH Questions with the chart above, you can try a hands-on sorting activity with your students.
First, make the sorting mats. You can just print out large icons of the different WH- questions with the word and visuals. (I use Boardmaker but there are lots of ways to do this). Or you can take construction paper and glue on the word/icons for each Wh question and laminate them.
Next, print out a variety of smaller pictures they can sort. For instance, people=who, places=where, objects/actions=what, etc. and cut them apart.
You can start with just one mat, then go up to to more slowly.
If you don’t want to make it yourself – grab these WH Questions Sorting Mats & Worksheets.
WH Question Bingo
With this interactive game, you can practice types of WH questions individually (i.e. just work on “who” questions) or try the mixed boards to work on differentiation between the different types!
Practice with WH Question Picture Scenes
Once your student understands that different types of words are used to answer certain question types, you can present picture scenes and ask multiple types of questions about the same picture. For instance:
Including visual supports and choices can help bridge this skill for a lot of students, especially students on the autism spectrum. When they are ready, try removing some of the visual supports. You can grab a set of picture scenes with Wh Questions here (includes photos with and without visuals supports).
Practice with Short Stories and WH Questions
Take it up a notch of difficulty by presenting short stories and asking WH Questions. You can use your favorite books with pictures to work on this. (Be sure to keep the visual chart above handy for prompting!)
If your student still needs some visual aids, you can also consider using this set of short stories with visual choices!
I hope this is helpful for students on your caseload!
-Margaret
One Comment
Pingback: