Several years before transitioning to secondary school teaching, my journey began in academia, teaching at university while pursuing a PhD and supplementing my income with private tutoring. Resource scarcity was a reality, but I relied heavily on one invaluable tool for all my university classes and tutoring sessions: a single A4 sheet divided into three columns labeled ‘What’, ‘How’, and ‘Why’. Within these columns, I curated a list of questions designed to stimulate critical thinking in my students.
It struck me then, and remains my firm belief now, that this framework represents the most intuitive and organic starting point for engaging with literature. What is the text conveying? How does the writer achieve this expression? Why might the writer choose this particular approach? While I initially incorporated this resource into my secondary school teaching, it was quickly overshadowed by the prevalent ‘PEE’ method, a concept entirely foreign to me at the time. As years passed, the explicit use of ‘what, how, why’ faded from my active teaching practice, though the underlying concept occasionally resurfaced.
Years later, my engagement with Twitter led me to Becky Wood’s insightful post on WHW and PEE, rekindling my interest. I was surprised to discover that ‘What, How, Why’ was not just my personal approach but a recognized methodology. I promptly reintegrated it into my teaching, this time with a more deliberate and explicit focus than before. It has since become a cornerstone of my pedagogical approach, and I’ve observed its growing adoption and discussion within the educational community – a development I wholeheartedly endorse.
Therefore, I present my reflections on the ‘What, How, Why’ framework, structured, predictably, around three core questions:
- What is the What, How, Why framework?
- How can you effectively introduce What, How, Why to your students?
- Why is the What, How, Why approach beneficial in literary education?
WHAT is the What, How, Why Framework?
At its core, the ‘What How Why’ framework is more than just a writing template; it’s a dual-faceted approach to both writing about and critically analyzing literature. This crucial ‘and’ distinguishes it from more restrictive alternatives like PEE, a point we will revisit. It serves as both a structured template for written literary analysis and a series of cognitive prompts designed to scaffold and stimulate student thinking and responses.
While variations exist, the fundamental prompts underpinning the WHW approach typically resemble the following:
WHAT:
- What feelings does this text evoke in me?
- What overall tone is established within the text?
- What specific emotions are conveyed through the writing?
- What central thoughts or ideas are being presented?
- What perspective or idea about a particular character is being developed?
- What overarching themes or ideas does the text explore?
HOW:
- How does the writer craftily elicit these feelings in the reader?
- How is the established tone effectively conveyed?
- How does the text successfully communicate a specific emotion?
- How does the writer employ literary devices and techniques to achieve their purpose?
- How are these thoughts or ideas effectively expressed through language?
- How is the writer’s perspective on the character revealed and developed?
- How does the text weave together various elements to express its central themes or ideas?
WHY:
- Why might the writer intend to evoke these specific feelings in the audience?
- Why does the writer aim to establish this particular tone?
- Why is it important for the writer to convey this emotion?
- Why has the writer chosen to utilize language and literary techniques in this particular way?
- Why are these thoughts or ideas expressed in this manner?
- Why does the writer present their perspective on the character in this specific way?
- Why does the writer choose to express these themes or ideas through these particular literary choices?
Therefore, WHW provides a versatile set of prompts applicable to various textual elements – a single word, a vivid image, a significant passage, or the entire text itself. It’s designed to guide students in answering fundamental questions about literature: What is the text doing? How is it achieving this? and Why is it doing it in this particular way?
HOW to Introduce What, How, Why to Your Students
Certain instructional moments demand meticulous planning to ensure clarity and impact. Introducing WHW for the first time is one such instance, warranting a carefully crafted explanation for optimal student comprehension and future application. Here’s a breakdown of the script I use, adaptable for various age groups and learning levels:
I begin by establishing WHW as a universal framework, relevant whether students are in Year 7, preparing for GCSEs, tackling A-Levels, or even studying at university. It’s a lens through which to examine, interpret, and write about literature. I emphasize that much of what WHW embodies is likely already occurring subconsciously for them – a natural process of engagement with text. (This inherent naturalness, I argue, is another point of divergence and advantage over the arguably more artificial PEE method). My goal is to make this intuitive process explicit and structured.
I then proceed to explain each component – What, How, and Why – individually, introducing the associated prompts that will become familiar tools for analysis. As I articulate these prompts, I consciously connect them to the text currently under study, providing immediate context and practical application. Crucially, I wouldn’t introduce WHW at the very outset of a new class. It’s more effective to lay some foundational groundwork first, perhaps a few weeks into the term, after students have some familiarity with analytical sentence starters and techniques for embedding quotations.
Starting with WHAT, I present and discuss the prompts like these:
Moving onto HOW:
And finally, WHY, consistently modeling application to the text at hand to demonstrate its immediate relevance:
Throughout this explanation, I underscore that the core questions remain consistent across all academic levels. I often share that these are the very questions I ask myself when I engage with a text, regardless of my experience or expertise. The difference lies in the sophistication and depth of the answers, which are refined through practice and increasingly nuanced analytical skills. This is a key reason I favor WHW as a pedagogical framework; it aligns seamlessly with the principle of ‘teaching to the top’. The fundamental inquiries posed to a Year 7 student are the same fundamental inquiries a GCSE or A-Level student – or even a seasoned literary scholar – would consider.
After walking students through the individual prompts, I synthesize the framework into its most concise and memorable form, presented visually as:
Finally, I clarify that WHW’s applicability spans textual scale, from the minutest detail like a single word or line to broader elements such as imagery or even the entire text. To illustrate this scalability, I might sketch a visual – a small circle within a larger circle – to represent the nested nature of textual analysis.
Depending on time constraints, I might proceed directly to the next stage of WHW introduction or defer it to a subsequent lesson. If continuing in a later session, I’d initiate with retrieval practice, posing questions like, ‘When considering ‘WHAT’, what kind of things should you be thinking about?’ or ‘Let’s revisit that image from Macbeth; how would you approach ‘WHAT’ in relation to it?’. But assuming time allows for immediate continuation, the next step unfolds as follows.
I select a compelling image or word from the current text and initiate a class discussion centered on applying the WHW prompts to this specific element. Employing the ‘I do—We do—You do’ pedagogical model, the ‘I do’ phase is already accomplished through my initial explanation and modeling of the prompts. This next stage becomes the ‘We do’ phase – a guided, collaborative class exploration of an image or textual detail previously encountered.
This serves multiple purposes. Firstly, I aim to establish WHW initially as a cognitive process, a mode of thinking, before explicitly focusing on it as a writing framework. The written output will follow, but the inherent value of WHW as a thinking tool is paramount and should be foregrounded from the outset. By selecting an image or element already familiar to students, I minimize extraneous cognitive load, allowing them to concentrate solely on mastering the WHW process itself. As the course progresses, I integrate WHW frequently into classroom discussions, prompting students to verbally navigate their understanding of images or moments in the text, reinforcing familiarity and fluency with the process. Depending on student engagement and comprehension, I might repeat this guided practice a couple more times with different textual examples.
Subsequently, I transition to having students apply this thinking process independently. This might involve providing another image or textual excerpt and specifying particular prompts for them to use, such as, ‘What feelings does this image evoke? How does the word ‘X’ contribute to that feeling? Why do you think the writer chose that specific word?’. Students can record their responses in informal notes – no formal paragraph structure is required at this stage. The primary focus remains on assessing their ability to internally process and structure their response using the WHW prompts. Following this independent practice, I would typically solicit responses from various students, offering targeted feedback and reinforcing key aspects of the WHW approach.
Typically, at this juncture, the lesson time would be concluding. The subsequent step, introducing WHW as a written scaffold, would then be implemented in a following lesson. Once I am confident that students are comfortable utilizing WHW as a cognitive framework, I re-engage the ‘I/We/You’ model, returning to the beginning of the cycle since no formal written application of WHW has yet occurred.
I begin by selecting yet another image from the text and, again, facilitate a whole-class discussion, guiding the analysis through the WHW framework. However, this time, in contrast to the previous discussion-focused activity, I live-model the transformation of these spoken ideas into a written WHW paragraph. The intended outcome is a moment of realization for students – an ‘Ahhhh, I see, it’s not just for discussion, I can use this to write too!’ – solidifying the connection between analytical thinking and written expression. This live-modeled paragraph might resemble something like this:
Following the ‘I/We/You’ sequence, I then select another image, and we repeat the process collaboratively. This time, I pause frequently, prompting students to suggest next steps in the writing process or to contribute to editing and refining the paragraph as we construct it together. Finally, for the ‘You do’ phase, I present a further image, and students independently generate their own WHW paragraphs. I then select a few student responses to share and provide live marking or feedback for the class. To further support independent application, I would by this point have distributed WHW bookmarks, a handy visual reminder that students can keep in their books:
My aim following this sequence of introductory lessons is that students will be able to confidently:
- Employ WHW as a structured series of prompts to guide their thinking about any image or moment within a text. This analytical approach will be consistently integrated into the types of questions I pose in class discussions.
- Utilize WHW as a writing scaffold to effectively articulate their analysis of images or moments in a text in written form. This written application will be progressively embedded into future lessons, initially in shorter exercises, gradually building towards the foundation for extended essay writing.
Naturally, this is an ongoing process of development and refinement. We continually revisit earlier steps as needed and provide ample opportunities for further practice. This might take the form of additional live modeling, short ‘Do Now’ tasks focused on WHW paragraph construction, or dedicated essay preparation sessions where we deconstruct and analyze effective examples of WHW application in extended writing. Furthermore, future Whole Class Feedback (WCF) sessions would frequently be anchored to the ongoing development and refinement of WHW skills.
However, it’s crucial to reiterate that WHW’s value extends beyond just a writing template; it is equally, if not more importantly, a thinking framework. Therefore, we would also integrate WHW into routine classroom discussions. For example, I might use WHW prompts to scaffold a class discussion of a specific image, or employ paired elaborative interrogation routines structured around the same WHW cues. It can also be adapted for retrieval practice, where I might ask students, for instance, ‘What is the central idea behind Blake’s ‘London’ poem?’, ‘How does Blake express this idea, providing specific examples from the poem?’, and ‘Choosing one of those examples, why do you think he expresses it in that particular way?’.
The overarching goal is to embed thinking through WHW into the routine fabric of classroom activity, applicable both to our initial engagement with texts and to how we subsequently articulate our understanding in writing. Ideally, over time, students will begin to experiment with the framework, perhaps starting with ‘Why’ and then moving to ‘How’, demonstrating a flexible and internalized command of the WHW approach.
WHY Should We Use the What, How, Why Framework?
Few educators would argue against the value of prompts in stimulating student thinking or the utility of writing scaffolds. The more pertinent question, then, is likely: why choose WHW over alternative frameworks like PEE or PEEL?
This is a valid and important question, particularly given the superficial similarities between WHW and PEE. Both provide a structured approach, a template, for writing about literature. One could certainly model a PEE paragraph just as effectively as a WHW paragraph. However, I contend that there are fundamental distinctions that render WHW significantly more effective and pedagogically sound.
The core difference stems from the fact that, unlike PEE (and its variations), WHW is organically aligned with the way we naturally engage with and interpret literature. It emerges from our disciplinary traditions in a way that PEE simply does not. WHW mirrors the cognitive processes that expert readers, often unconsciously, employ when encountering a text for the first time.
For instance, when we personally engage with a text, we instinctively ask ourselves questions that closely resemble the WHW prompts:
What feelings does this text evoke in me? What is happening in this passage? What is the text trying to achieve here?
How is it creating this effect? How is language being used in this specific instance? How is the text structured to create this particular impact? How am I, as the reader, being made to feel this way?
Why has the writer chosen this particular approach? Why select this specific word over another? Why is the writer aiming to evoke this particular feeling in the reader?
Conversely, it’s highly unlikely that when engrossed in a book, we consciously ask ourselves questions like, ‘What point can I make about this?’, ‘What evidence can I find to support this point?’, or ‘How can I analyze or explain this evidence in detail?’.
PEE, in essence, feels like an artificial construct, an add-on to the organic process of literary engagement, often implemented to satisfy external assessment criteria. It is not intrinsically linked to our natural cognitive processes when reading texts but rather a mechanistic and somewhat reductive supplementary layer.
The most compelling writing about literature is, ideally, the codified articulation of our conceptual journey through the text, our attempt to make sense of its complexities. WHW is integral to this conceptual process; it arises from it, it is it. PEE, on the other hand, is external to this organic process.
To put it another way, WHW originates from the ideas and emotional responses we have when we encounter literature. It provides a framework for translating these internal experiences into written expression. It’s a set of prompts designed to scaffold and make explicit the inherent expert reading processes we aim to cultivate in our students. PEE, conversely, often begins with the product – the desire to produce a structured paragraph – and works backward, potentially overlooking the crucial initial stages of genuine textual engagement and interpretation.
WHW is fundamentally a conceptual template, guiding the thinking process itself. PEE often functions more as an essay template, focusing on paragraph structure rather than initial understanding. WHW prioritizes the text itself, encouraging deep engagement and exploration. PEE, in many implementations, risks prioritizing the paragraph as the primary unit of analysis, potentially overshadowing the nuances of the text.
Furthermore, PEE’s effectiveness is often predicated on already knowing the point you wish to make. In such cases, its utility is questionable. ‘What point? What evidence? What explanation?’ – these questions don’t inherently provide a starting point for generating ideas or insights about a text. They assume a pre-existing understanding that the student must then simply structure into a paragraph.
WHW, however, does offer that crucial starting point. It’s not a hollow procedure to be mechanically applied but rather a set of cues that initiate and guide the process of working through one’s own reactions to a text. Any reader, regardless of experience, can and should begin by asking, ‘What does this text make me feel?’, ‘How does it create this feeling?’, and ‘Why might this be the writer’s intention?’. These are the foundational questions that unlock deeper understanding and more authentic, insightful literary analysis.
