5Ws and 1H

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This activity practices making sentences and identifying the who, what, where, when, why and how (5Ws and 1H) of the sentence. This activity can be scaled so that not all of the parts are covered (only 4Ws for example).This is designed for Writing and is good for Junior High and Senior High.

Materials Needed

A simple worksheet that has boxes for the students to break up their sentences into the different parts. Scissors for the students to cut up their worksheets.

Sample Table

This is what the table might look like;

Who	What	Where	When	Why	How
Ishii Kumi, four years old,	broke her arm	near the station	yesterday.	Bikes fell over like dominoes and one fell on Kumi.	When a man was parking his bike, it hit another.

Who	What	Where	When
Ishii Kumi, four years old,	broke her arm	near the station	yesterday.

Cool name(s) for this activity: Power Sentences Power Words

Contents

Break the class into groups of about 4. Give each group a worksheet and ask them to write a number of sentences. Three sentences is a good amount, depending on how long you want the lesson to go for.

Get the students to cut up the sentences (into their separate W and H parts) and put it into a common container for the class for each part of the sentence. I.e. all the whats with all the other whats etc.

Randomly redistribute the parts to the groups to construct new sentences. Some of these sentences may be grammatically incorrect (tense, for example). Have the students write down a corrected version.

Students can come up to the front of the class to write their sentences on the board. Discuss and correct the sentences as a class.

Notes

To speed up the sentence writing process, you can prompt them with nouns, verbs etc. For example, have each team pick up a number of word cards that they must include in one of their sentences. Reducing the freedom of the students to create their sentences reduces the amount of uncertainty.

Japanese Translation and Examples

English	Japanese	Example (from )
When	いつ	When can you see fireworks? - We can see them in summer.
Where	どこ	Where is my bag?? - It is under the desk
Who	だれ	Who is bill? - He is my brother.
Whose	だれの（もの）	Whose bag is this? - It is mine. Whose is this bag? - It is mine.
What	何（の）	What is this? - It is a bird. What do you do after school? - I play tennis. What sports do you like? - I like soccer.
How	どう、どのようにして	How is the weather? - It is sunny. How do you come to school? - I come by bus.
Which	どの	Which bus goes to cit hall? - Take Bus No. 3.
How...	どのくらい...	How many CDs do you have? - I have five. How long does it take? - It takes about fifteen minuets. How old are you? - I am thirteen years old.