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Hello!
Today we will be looking at the five Ws of reading, and how.
In first grade, you learned that most stories
have at least three things in common: main events, settings, and characters.
While being able to identify these things is important, sometimes when we read, it can
be helpful to look closely to other details.
To look at these new details, you will have to ask and answer questions relating to the
five Ws of reading: who, what, where, when, and why, as well as how.
33, 54 After this introduction video, you will know
the basics about answering questions about how and the 5 Ws.
You should also be able to show that you understand what you are reading, by using them to describe
key details.
We will be looking at how to ask and answer questions about each of these Ws, one or two
at a time.
Let's start with "Who".
When you are asked questions relating to "Who",
you are usually being asked something like: "Who are the characters?"or "Who is
in the story?" Now sometimes characters are people, but they can also be animals or
plants, or really anything or anyone that does something in a story.
So, if you read a story called "Spot Goes to the Park" and you are asked: "Who are
the character", you could guess that Spot is one of the characters.
Now that we have spent some time looking at who is involved in a story, let's
move on to where and when the story takes place.
Last year when you first looked at setting,
you were probably asked questions such as: "Where is this story happening?" But,
finding key details in a story can go way beyond that question.
Asking and answering questions about when and where a story takes place can be
broken down into several parts.
Let's start with "when".
You might see, hear, or ask questions like: "when does this story take place" Sometimes,
stories will be very clear and say that something happened at a specific time, like noon, or
8:45.
Other times, it won't be as easy to find as a time on the clock.
You can be much more general when asking questions about when.
For example, if you see characters in the story eating breakfast, you can say it takes
place in the morning or at breakfast time.
Likewise, if a character is looking out of the window and mentions that they can see
the moon, you can say that the story takes place at night time.
Sometimes, questions about when can be answered using even broader measurements
of time.
A Question like, "When in the year does this story take place?" can be answered
looking in terms of seasons or months.
So, whether you see a character playing in the snow or on the beach might affect how
you answer this question.
When you are asking questions about when, or about where, ask questions related to what
you want to know, specifically.
If not, you could want to find information about what season the story happens in, and
end up with more information on what time in the day it takes place.
2:57, 4:00 "Where", which is our third of five Ws,
can also be used to ask and answer questions about setting.
In the last slides, we saw the question: "When does this story take place?" Now, we will
look at, "Where does this story take place?" Imagine a character in a book
is eating a delicious breakfast, where is he eating it?
If you said the kitchen, or in his house, you would have answered this question correctly.
We can use the information we find when we answer questions about "when" or "where"
to find key details about the setting of a story.
If you look at the very first example of "Spot Goes to the Park", but instead of being
asked who the characters are, you are asked "What is the setting of this story?" You
could first ask the questions, "When does this story take place?" and "Where does
the story take place?" Just by the title, you could assume that the answer to the second
question is the park.
Being able to ask one question that helps you answer another will be helpful for the
rest of your reading and writing future.
Let's look at our next W-what.
Typically, when people ask questions pertaining to "what", they are asking about the plot,
or main events of a story.
"Why" and "How", which we will look at next, are also used to ask and answer questions
about plot.
You might hear a question like: "What happens to the characters in the story?" or, simply,
"What happens in the story?" To answer these questions, you must look back at what
you are reading, and find what you think is most important.
For stories with a lot of details and characters, this can be hard to do.
Luckily, our pretend example story, "Spot Goes to the Park" is not very detailed.
Let's pretend the book has three pages: one that says, "Spot likes to run", a
second that says, "Spot decides to run to the park", and a third that says, "He
has fun at the park".
If I asked, "What happened in this story?" how would you answer?
If you said, "Spot decides to run to the park and has some fun" you would be correct.
I know that most books have more than three pages, and the pages have more than five words
on them, but the principle stays the same.
If you can pick out what is important in a story, you know what happens within it.
Look at that!
We're almost done!
Finally, let's look at asking and answering questions about "why" and "how".
And, no, I won't be using the "Spot Goes to the Park" example for these questions.
This is because these questions require deeper thinking.
While it's true that questions such as: "Why does this happen in the story?" or
"How does this happen?" are typically being asked of the plot, it is also true that
you cannot answer these questions solely by looking back at previous pages.
These questions take the last question, "What happened in the story", to a higher level.
With that being said, the first thing you do to answer these questions is look back
into the story, and pick out what you think is important.
Next, you must reflect on why the character did what you felt was important.
This is why looking at the other four Ws of reading is so important; it helps you find
key details that you need to answer the higher level questions.
By thinking about what in the story made a character do something drastic, or crazy,
or different, you answer the question "Why does this happen?" By explaining the steps
that were taken by a character to do something in a story, you answer, "How does this happen?"
I want to challenge you all to try to answer
these questions, and even ask a few of your own, about your favorite story or book.
I hope that this video showed you the basics of how the five Ws of reading (and how) can
be used within your own reading.
If you're still confused, don't worry, we will be going over this in more detail
later.
Until then, happy reading!