Basic Strategies for Teaching Answering Wh ?'s

Teaching children with autism to answer wh ?’s questions is an imperative skill for improving comprehension and social language skills. Answering wh?’s can be broken down and taught using rules and concrete concepts. When teaching who, what, and where questions begin first by teaching rules.

Rules

Who =person
Where= place
When = time

Person, Place, Time

Once your child can list or describe the “rule” for the targeted wh ? begin developing the concepts of person, place, and time. Make sure you target the questions individually, for example first teach who, then where, etc. To begin developing your child’s concepts of person, place and time ask your child to list, or categorize “banks” of examples of each. For example, child “lists” 5-10 persons (siblings, parents, relatives, friends, teachers, etc). Be sure your child can list unfamiliar and generic (i.e. Mr. Smith, Johnny, etc.) community helpers (i.e. doctor, policeman, etc.).

Teach in a Sentence

Once your child is able to list or categorize familiar/unfamiliar persons,places, and times, begin using in a sentence and asking questions. You may need to have a visual of the rule present to pre-teach or error correct with your child.

Example:

Give your child a sentence, (example)”Mom when to the store.” , ask your child “who?”

Child responds “Mom”

Be sure to ask the wh ? in isolation initially to assist your child in discriminating the wh? word and not just filling in the blank for the only word you did not give him/her (i.e. Do not use the other words in the sentence ”who went to the store?”, etc.). Also, be sure to move the “person”, etc. around in the sentence (i.e. “The person who went to the store was mom.”, The person named mom, went to the store.”) in order to assist the child in following the “person” around in different orders in the sentence. Follow this structure when teaching where, and when concepts as well.