Teaching the 5 W's - Who, What, Where, When, and Why - has never been my favourite subject. And because I am not too excited about it, my students don't get too excited about it, either. For me, it's just tedious. Last year, I was teaching a Grade 4/5 class, and when we looked at informational writing, the 5 W's came up again. I tried to find a fun and creative way to liven up this topic, and I remembered something I had seen on Pinterest , coming from a blog called Sarcasm 101 - story sticks! Ruby, the original poster, used coloured popsicle sticks as elements of a story. One colour for character, another for conflict, etc. I decided to adapt the idea, and make each colour stick into one of the 5 W's. I spent an hour or so coming up with a class set of sticks. The red sticks show "WHEN," green sticks show "WHERE," yellow sticks show "WHO," and the blue sticks "WHAT." I told my students to pretend they w...