If Only I Could Get Professional Development Hours For Following Blogs: ANSWERING QUESTIONS!!

How many of your students have goals to work on answering basic wh- questions or higher level thinking questions?!  Working in the schools, it is VERY common since it impacts academic performance tremendously.  In today's post, I will touch upon answering basic questions since most are working on this goal!

How to I address answering basic wh- questions:

• Visual aids: I always have visual cues available.  Click HERE to view my previous post with a visual I use (and freebie!)
• Sort: have students sort answers to questions to the correct question form.  This will help them discriminate the different types.
• Practice!! It is important to constantly drill and practice.  Do your students understand the vocabulary concepts included in the question?!  It may be important to teach the vocabulary first.  I like to use the classroom curriculum/theme vocabulary with the question probes.  This way it tackles two goals at once but it also ensures that students have already been exposed to the vocabulary.
• Give choices: while teaching the concepts, give students choices of answers.  First start off with two choices, one that answers the specific question form and another that would answer a different one.  For example, if you ask "Who teaches students how to read and write?"  you can give students the two examples "teachers" and "school."  This way you are not working on the vocabulary of teacher but the question form "who."  As students improve, add more choices and then eliminate them!
• Give answer stems or carrier phrases.  Click HERE to see a previous post on how I teach how to respond to "why" questions.

Are you wondering how your other favorite bloggers/TpT sellers work on answering questions?

•  "I love using picture books & using one type of question to "train" the skill (ex, who is that? Who is in the barn? Who is..., etc.). Start simple and add complexity as the student is able. Use cues (visial-pictures and pointing; verbal-modeling the answer, etc) & fade as they get the hang of it."~Chatterbox Speech
• " I like using Chipper Chat for wh-questions from super duper. I also like reading children's stories and asking questions throughout the story so the kids have visuals. If they are having trouble I will give choices to choose from for the answers."~TheDabblingSpeechie
• " I like to use a visual poster as a support when working on WH questions. The poster gives visuals of the type of answers that could help them answer. So for example, the WHEN symbols include a clock and calendar."~Jenna from Speech Room News
• "I love using books, magazine articles, or newspaper articles. Everyone has at least one of these things in their speech room! Just read a small (or large passage depending on the age) and ask WH- questions about it. I like to have some sort of visual out in case my students need some help in figuring out how to answer."~Speech with Sharon
• "I like to use simple children's stories. They're great for asking/answering questions. For commercial products, I love WH- Chipper Chat from Super Duper!"~ Carrie from Carrie's Speech Corner
•  "I also like to use books to address asking/answering questions. The biggest thing is to make sure that students understand the meaning behind the wh- question words as I run into many students who don't. I use a visual story rope to teach them the meaning behind the questions as well as a reference when we're going through the story."~The Thrifty SLP

Below is a list of my favorite books to use to work on answering questions!

Are you looking for an activity that has many of my strategies included in one packet?!  You can enter to win a copy of my Wh- Question Trains Fun pack below!

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