About this activity
Twelve Spanish questions that need more than a one-word answer: ¿Cuándo desayunas? ¿Cuándo hay que pedir ayuda? ¿Por qué te pones un abrigo? ¿Por qué se cayó el vaso? ¿Cómo se hace un sándwich? ¿Cómo llegas a la escuela? ¿Cómo te sientes cuando alguien te ayuda? These three question words all demand explanation rather than identification, which is what makes them the harder set.
How to use it in a session
Do the cuándo questions first, which need a time and are the most concrete, then por qué, which needs a reason, then cómo, which needs a whole procedure. That is the order of difficulty. The sandwich question is the hardest on the board — it requires an ordered sequence rather than a single answer, and it is the best one to spend real time on. Twelve minutes covers a subset properly.
What to listen for
Listen for porque clauses in the answers. A child who answers ¿por qué te pones un abrigo? with hace frío has the reason and not the clause; porque hace frío is the target. Watch whether cómo questions get answered with a single step — a student who says con pan for how to make a sandwich has named an ingredient rather than described a process.
Carrying it home
These questions fit into any conversation in Spanish at home. Asking por qué and waiting for a full porque answer, rather than accepting a fragment, is the whole intervention.
Questions
- Is this board in Spanish?
- Yes, all twelve questions are Spanish. This page is in English so an English-speaking clinician can find and evaluate it.
- Do I need an account?
- No, it plays free in the browser.
- Why are these harder than quién, qué and dónde?
- Because they need explanation rather than identification. Quién and dónde can be answered by pointing; por qué and cómo require a clause or a sequence, which is a much larger language demand.