Level 3 — learning to answer who, what, where questions

In level 3 we begin teaching the child to answer different questions: what? who? where? what is he doing?

When working in level 3, you always continue to work on observation with the series Observation 3. This series contains many more exercises where the child has to do non-identical matching. That is: they see person A jumping rope with their arms in the air, then they have to choose between person B jumping rope with their arms in the air, person C spinning while jumping, and person D also jumping rope but clapping their hands at the same time. This type of exercise is an ANI-_X (non-identical matching). It is even harder than the level 2 exercise where, in the first panel, you see person A perform the action and then, among the choices, person B performing all the other actions (an ANI-_G).

In addition, the videos last longer and are more difficult. For example, the videos showing people playing hopscotch in a particular way (right foot, left foot, both feet, etc.) are difficult for most children. We filmed playground actions (hopscotch, clapping hands, playing basketball) to help children observe other children's games during recess. There are also videos of greeting a person, so that the child can observe how we greet someone else (which can differ depending on the relationship or the place we are in).

Preparing the child to answer questions 1: auditory matching

Before starting to teach the child to answer different questions, we revisit auditory matching, where the child has to match the sentences: "what is it?" versus "what is he doing?", "who is it?" versus "what is it?", "what is she doing?" versus "what is he doing?", "where is it?" versus "what is it?", "where is it?" versus "who is it?".

Preparing the child to answer questions 2: the W- exercises

To teach the child what the questions mean, we created images/videos that act out the different questions. This way, the child can also do W- exercises where they must reproduce the question that was used in the sentence at the end (third panel).

• For "what?": you see an object on the table, but the object is blurred.
• For "who?": you see a person, but the person's face is blurred.
• For "where?": you see a living room, but several places are blurred (on the table, in the cupboard, etc.).

See Préparation questions Qui - Quoi - Où. In the W- exercises, there are (at least) two people: one asks the other "what is it?", then the other names the object. Next, the child has to choose between the image for what?, who? or where?, and then they have to name it, saying: "what is it?" — just as when naming an action, here they name the question that was asked in the video (this is a W-Qpao).

For the "where" question we do the same, except the sentences are longer. It is the hardest question for children — which is why we start with "who" and "what" before "where".

Differentiating the questions

In QQ c'est ? QQ fait ? A, the child learns to tell the difference between the questions "what is it?" and "what is he doing?".

We teach the names with the series Personnes, then we do the series Enseignement questions Qui - Quoi - Où to teach the child to answer the questions correctly. They are guided by the choices given after the question. For example: in the first panel, you see a person holding an object and the question "who is it?" is asked. In the second panel, only people are offered as choices — obviously, the answer to give is the name of the person who was holding the object. The child cannot get it wrong because they can only choose a person. They touch that person whose first name they heard, then in the third panel they see them again and have to name them correctly to receive their star. When the question asked is "what is it?", there are only objects among the choices. This way the child learns that "who is it?" asks for the person's name and "what is it?" for the object's name.

Teaching actions at level 3 — the meiactions series

We wanted to create a series where the child learns to tell the difference between the person / the action / the place when watching an action. In our view, it is essential to distinguish these things before being able to answer correctly questions such as "who is it?", "what is he doing?" and "where is he?" about a person performing an action in a place!

To do this, each series contains the following steps:

AI- — Matching all the elements of the scene: the person, the action, the place. The difference from what came before is that the child matches a scene, and in the scene only the person, only the action or only the place changes! We therefore force the child to look at that stimulus alone. In the first panel, the child also hears a single word (the name of the person, the action or the place); this way they can learn the name for that element, but they do not need to name it at the end (two panels only).

W-_D — You see the scene (for example, a child jumping on the trampoline) and hear a single word. Then, among the choices, there are the place, the person and the action: the child has to choose the element that was named.

W-_X — You see the scene and the whole sentence is spoken ("the boy is jumping on the trampoline"), then the child has to choose between the 4 people, the 4 actions or the 4 places of the series, and name a single element at the end.

LR-_F1 — You hear "the boy is jumping on the trampoline". Depending on the exercise, only the person changes among the choices (LR-Pal), only the action (LR-Apl) or only the place (LR-Lpa). The child only needs to pay attention to one element or factor (F1); they see the choices quickly after the sentence and then know what to pay attention to.

LR-_F2 — Same principle, but two elements change (e.g. person + action: boy/girl × jumping/running). The child has to pay attention to two factors to find the right answer. In general, the earlier the element appears in the sentence, the harder it is: an LR-L is much easier than an LR-A, and an LR-P is even harder than an LR-A. Children who cannot retain 3 words (level 2) will fail this exercise.

LR-_D — The child sees a scene but hears only one word. Among the choices, only the named target is identical; everything else has changed. For example: the boy is jumping on the trampoline, the word "jump" is said, and the choices are: the boy running in the kitchen, the girl jumping in the sandbox, the man crawling on the trampoline, the woman walking in the garden. Very difficult — they have to find only "jump", which is exactly the goal.

Q-_G — You see a scene and the question is asked ("what is he doing?"), then you see the 4 actions among the choices: the child is guided to give the right answer without error. Once they have learned to answer correctly, they will be able to answer BEFORE the choices are offered — if this happens, we reinforce that behavior right away (2 tokens instead of one) and continue with the Q-_X (or Q-_D).

Q-_D — The question is asked about the scene, but the choices show the 3 elements (the boy, "jump", the trampoline). An intermediate step between Q-_G and Q-_X, which can be skipped if the child does not need it.

Q-_X — The question is asked about the scene, without a second panel: the child has to answer right away.

IT- — For asking more complicated questions: in the first panel there is only the question ("What is the boy doing on the trampoline?"), then the child chooses among crossed scenes, and in the third panel they name the scene ("the boy is crawling on the trampoline") or simply say "crawl" — also correct!

Each series is named meiactions[number]:

The WNLs of level 3

As in level 2, there are W- exercises where the child learns new names of objects and actions in everyday conversations:

• Cheval
• WNL niveau 3 École
• WNL niveau 3 Ferme
• WNL Question 1 objet
• Répondre aux questions C'est qui ? versus C'est quoi ?
• Répondre aux questions C'est où ? versus C'est qui ? versus C'est quoi ?