The 5 Whys involves students responding to a prompt or problem, then answering “why?” five times to try to understand the root cause.
Instructions
- Provide students with an open prompting question and give them time to note down an answer.
- Have the students ask “why?” to their first and each consecutive answer until “why?” has been answered 5 times.
- Get students to make note of their final answer as a possible root cause.
Resources
- A prompt
Variations
- Vary the number of “whys”: For some topics, answering “why” 5 times may be excessive. Students could answer “why?” 2-3 times, or until they feel they have reached a sensible root cause, instead.
- Make it a group activity: Students break into groups of 5 and form a circle. Working around the circle, each student answers “why?” to the previous student’s response.
- Change the question: Different kinds of analysis and understanding could be gained by changing the question to, for example, “how?”
- More student choice: Allow the students to complete the 5 whys on a topic of their choice, particularly one they may be struggling to understand. Allow use of notes to answer the “why’s”.