Many of you may already use the “Journalist’s Questions” to help focus your summaries. This is great! Memorizing these 6 simple questions can help you write clearer summaries and better pick out main ideas. I’ve included some more detailed questions under the main questions.
Who?
- Who is the main character of the story?
- Who is doing most of the action?
- Who is the action being done against?
- Remember you may have more than one “who”.
- Remember the “who” could be a group of people, a government, a nation, an institution, etc.
What?
- What happened?
- What is the main event?
Where?
- Did the story take place in a specific town, country, or region?
When?
Did the story take place at a specific time or during a period of time?
Why?
- Why did the “what” happen? Why did the “who” do something?
How?
- How did the “what” happen? How did the “who” do something?
The “how” and “why” are the trickiest to answer. Try writing a clear question using other information you have gathered to help you focus on an answer.
Click for the handout from class–> 5Ws & an H handout
You can type on the lines of the PDF to practice typing along with the reading skill. Try using this with other news stories you’ve read!
Let me know what you think or if you have any questions! Simply click “Leave a Comment” to the left of the blog post.
Literacy Action Social Studies Scholars 