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Macmillan Education Australia 2012

5 Ws chart



The 5 Ws chart helps students to organise their thinking about listing the Who, When, Why, What and Where of a topic or
event in a visual and simple way. Encourage students to use dot points when they record information. Students need to be
able to identify key points of a topic or event including why an event happened and why that event was important.

It is a useful graphic organiser to give to students at the beginning of a topic being taught and have them make a list of
questions they would like answered by the end of the topic. Another way to use this organiser to is have students complete
the chart at the beginning of an inquiry listing questions they will investigate in the inquiry. Alternatively, they could fill the
chart in at the end of their inquiry summarising key components.

Consider developing a class activity where students list key information or questions on one giant chart as a class. This can
be used as a simple engaging (Engage 5Es) activity at the beginning of a lesson or evaluation (Evaluate 5Es) activity at the
end of a lesson. If you use interactive whiteboards the group chart can be saved and reviewed at a later time.
Topic: Date: Name:

5 Ws


Who? When?
Why?
Topic
Where?
What?

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