Five ‘W’s And a H’ – A way to turn ON the students THINKING HATS

Five ‘W’s And a H’ – A way to turn ON the students THINKING HATS
Any discovery, invention or interpretation is the outcome of one’s inquisitive mind that adopts an analytic approach. It is a known fact that analytical approaches always lead to a clear and accurate understanding of concepts. Talking about inquisitive minds, I must say, no other mind is as inquisitive as the young mind i.e. students. If these young minds encounter the right kind of fuel there are higher chances of positive outcomes. With this intention in my mind I decided to guide my students through an analytic reading approach using the technique called- Five ‘W’s And a H’. 

In simple terms Five ‘W’s And a H’ is an amalgamation of Wh questions (what, where, when, why, which and how.).  To get started with this technique, I used it with the 7th standard Balbharati prose lesson, Abdul becomes a courtier. This lesson being in the story format provided me good scope to apply this technique. As my students were already aware of the elements of the story, my next step was to take them one level higher as to how we can analyze these elements of the story. To avoid confusion or distraction on the part of the students while doing analysis, I had expressed the objective of the lesson in an explicit manner. The objective was to analyze the character- Abdul.

The best part about this technique was I didn’t have to spend much time explaining the technique as students were already familiar with Five ‘W’s And a H’. The only difference was, so far they had been dealing with all these separately and this time they had to use all of them together in order to understand the factors that lead to the growth of the character in a story as the story progresses.

Reflection on how this technique was carried out virtually

To begin with, students were shown the web chart of character analysis.

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Webchart

With the presence of web-chart it was clear to them that the character analyzing was the main focal point .

As it was the first time that the students were trying their hands on analyzing a character, they were clueless as to what to look for in a character ? or how to start with the analysis even with Five ‘W’s And a H’, here I helped them by providing  the prompt questions pertaining to each W and H.

To make this process a lot more interesting and also to ensure each child’s participation, I divided them into groups of 10. Breakout rooms proved to be beneficial in making this group learning more engaging and fun in this remote learning scenario. Before students broke into their assigned rooms for group discussion, they were assigned  their questions pertaining to each W and H. Each group was allotted the time limit of 15 mins to discuss their assigned questions.

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In the meantime, I was monitoring each group. While doing so I found that students were confident in putting forth their ideas before their peers and kind of opening up to listen to what others have to say. After fifteen mins, students returned to the main room. Once they all calmed down. We started with the sharing of the points.

Each group already had their speaker ready who was to share the points on behalf of the group. Each group speaker presented their points elaborating on the characters need of acquiring deep knowledge, his actions to fulfill his needs, the rewards he received as a result of his actions and his attributes and traits that actually helped him in becoming a courtier. 

Although students got a fair idea about the characters’ journey throughout the story during the sharing process, it was not a wholesome experience for them as the points were in bits and pieces. To give the students more concrete experience, I told each group to mail me their points. It was my duty to assemble all the points and present in front of them in our next session. In the next session, I assembled all the ideas on the virtual wall using the application called- Jamboard. 

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Jamboard

Students really loved the virtual wall with their ideas displayed on it. This left a concrete impression on the students as they got to know the journey of the character. Students also realized that characters not only undergo external changes but also internal changes that can be easily determined by the character’s actions and behaviours.

No teaching and learning process said to be complete without the assessment process as it is the reflection of our students’ understanding. Just to make sure that my students got the hang of the character analysis, I conducted a small assessment in the form of a graphic organiser.

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Students Works

Contributed by Vinita Pal

English Teacher, Std. 7.