WH- Word Sentence Formulation Activities

I love working with the little guys at my school, but I often miss working with the older ones!  I have a few activities in my repertoire that I just can’t seem to modify for preschool.  Here’s one of them...

Being an SLP, I have been using the WH- method of sentence formulation for a while now.

WHO

WHAT DOING (or WHAT DID)

WHERE

WHEN

(WHY)

I’ve seen a few different variations of this activity in workshops and on Pinterest.  One of my favorites from a workshop I attended involved using Post-It notes.  You need 4 different Post-it pads of different colors.  Assign 1 color to each WH word.  For example:

WHO = Pink

WHAT DOING = Green

WHERE = Yellow

WHEN = Blue

Next, students brainstorm responses for each category (e.g., WHO à My Dog, Mrs. Manchester, My sister, etc).  

"Who" responses

Once you have a certain number of responses for each (I usually started with 5), students take one of each Post-it and arrange them into a coherent sentence:

Don't forget, the Post-its don't necessarily have to follow this order to be syntactically correct!

I came up with another version of this activity.  I found this clip art from http://nicecliparts.com.  I printed the WH words on four different birds nests and responses on the baby birds. 

I then created a construction paper tree, attached it to the inside of my closet door, and placed the nests on the tree.

Students can work in teams or independently to place birds in the appropriate nests and formulate a sentence.

close up of the nests:  "A big frog crawled on the floor at the beach in the afternoon"

They can either read the sentence orally or write the sentence on a recording sheet.

 As an extension, you can have the children judge whether the sentence is syntactically appropriate and/or semantically appropriate.  For more on this activity, visit my TPT store. 

Do you use the WH sentence formulation format in your session?  If so, what’s your favorite variation?