Your Top Teaching Strategy for Answering Wh-Questions

It's gift-giving season again, and tech-related gifts are still high on everyone's wish-list.  For many students with special needs - particularly those with Autism - iPad apps continue to be great gifts that keep on giving throughout the year. 

Apps addressing various speech and language skills are plentiful, and parents are sometimes at a loss to figure out just which skills are important, what is developmentally appropriate for their child, and which apps introduce or teach the targeted skills in a way in which their child can learn.

One of the most difficult skills I have found to teach students with ASD in my almost 40 years as a SLP is how to answer Wh Questions.  And that is exactly why I developed a program to teach kids how to answer different types of Wh- questions.

Research has shown that students with language delays actually learn how to answer Wh-questions in about the same order as typical kids.  They just learn them later.

Typical children do develop more successful strategies for formulating acceptable responses to Wh-questions.  And, as we might expect, the ability to understand and respond with the general category of information required by the type of question develops a while before the ability to provide the correct answer.  

There are studies that have shown that children - both delayed and typical - from 3-7 are significantly less successful in figuring out what category of information is needed, and providing the answer requested; especially when the question refers to something not immediately in front of them. 

Question It and Question It ED are for the iPad only, and provide 4 sequential activities; all with faded color cues, use of errorless learning, and reinforcement for every 5 correct responses.  Students work their way from sorting words by which type of question they answer, through answering questions about simple sentences, then more complex sentences, and, finally, through answering questions about 3 related sentences in a paragraph.

Question It is free for a limited number of questions in each activity, then asks users to make an in-app purchase.  Question It ED offers a single pricing for school districts who can't make in-app purchases.

Best of all?!  Question It ED is on sale for the gift giving season, through the end of December 2016 for 9.99

If you're not into technology, and want a paper-based version of the activity, try A Program to Teach Wh-Questions in my store.

So, grab it, and Keep on Talking.