For some time now, we have experienced the power in asking a class “where” a student likes to do a card activity, as per Angela’s comment yesterday on how her class started with “Alex likes clarinets” and, through Circling/PQA, ended up with Alex playing the clarinet at Bikini Bottom.
But then Angela found out a bit later that Alex plays the clarinet at Bikini Bottom with Sponge Bob. This is huge. It brings in a lot more ownership by the students, not to mention strength of image. Thus, we find another PQA “power word” – the word “with”, as in “Class, with whom does Alex play the clarinet?” Why, with Sponge Bob, of course!
This shows the power of “with whom” as a question to go along with “where” – both can be termed genuine PQA “power words”. We will have to add “with” to the One Word Image prompt list as well. “With” is a simple word for them to learn anyway. Now we have a way to beef up our beginning of the year PQA even more!
The only caution is that if you extend that PQA into a little scene, then you may want to avoid presenting – at this time in first year classes anyway – the 3rd person plural sounds then required in the PQA when there are multiple protagonists. No biggie though because of the net hypothesis, but I like things clear as a bell in these first two months.