Interrogative Pronouns: A Fun Activity for ELA Students
Interrogative pronouns are pronouns that are used to ask questions. They are what, which, who, whom, and whose. In this post, I will share with you a fun activity that you can use to teach your students about interrogative pronouns and how to use them correctly.
Objectives
By the end of this activity, your students will be able to:
- Identify interrogative pronouns in sentences
- Use interrogative pronouns to form questions
- Distinguish between interrogative pronouns and interrogative determiners (also known as interrogative adjectives)
- Choose the appropriate interrogative pronoun for different situations
Materials
For this activity, you will need:
- A set of cards with different nouns written on them (e.g., dog, book, pizza, teacher)
- A set of cards with different adjectives written on them (e.g., big, red, delicious, funny)
- A set of cards with different interrogative pronouns written on them (e.g., what, which, who, whom, whose)
- A timer
- A scoreboard
Procedure
- Divide your students into two teams and assign each team a name.
- Explain the rules of the game: One student from each team will take turns to draw a card from each pile (noun, adjective, and interrogative pronoun) and use them to form a question. For example: "Whose big dog is barking?" or "Which funny book did you read?" The other students from their team have 10 seconds to answer the question using a complete sentence. For example: "It is John's big dog." or "I read The Cat in the Hat." If they answer correctly within the time limit, they get one point. If they answer incorrectly or run out of time, they lose one point. The team with the most points at the end wins.
- Shuffle each pile of cards and place them face down on a table.
- Choose a student from Team A to start the game by drawing one card from each pile and forming a question.
- Start the timer and ask Team A to answer the question.
- Check their answer for correctness and award or deduct points accordingly.
- Repeat steps 4-6 with Team B until all cards are used up or until you run out of time.
Assessment
To assess your students' learning outcomes from this activity, you can:
- Observe their participation and performance during the game
- Ask them to write down five questions using different interrogative pronouns
- Give them a quiz on identifying and using interrogative pronouns
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Extension
To extend this activity further, you can:
- Add more cards with different nouns and adjectives
- Add more cards with other types of words such as verbs or adverbs
- Add more cards with other types of questions such as yes/no questions or tag questions
- Vary the difficulty level by using more complex sentences or vocabulary
- Challenge your students to form questions without looking at their cards
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Variations
To adapt this activity for different levels or preferences of your students, you can:
- Use pictures instead of words on some or all of the cards
- Allow your students to use dictionaries or other resources if needed
- Allow your students to work in pairs or small groups instead of teams
- Allow your students to choose their own nouns and adjectives instead of drawing cards
- Allow your students to ask follow-up questions based on their answers
Reflection
After completing this activity with your students, you can ask them to reflect on what they learned by asking them questions such as:
* What did you enjoy most about this activity?
* What did you find challenging about this activity?
* How did this activity help you improve your understanding and use of interrogative pronouns?
* How can you apply what you learned from this activity in other contexts?