Knowing if a sentence is a statement or question seems really easy. But when the endmark is missing, many young children do not know what type of sentence it is.
To help with this we first discuss how most questions start (who, what, when, where, why, how, etc). These are our clue words to tell us the sentence is a question. After we write these clue words onto a large piece of paper (which will stay up the entire year) the children are partnered up. They write five questions on their paper that they'd like to know about their partner. This is their question writing practice. They take turns asking their questions and writing the answers (statement writing practice).
When everyone is done the students can each share one question and answer that they found interesting about their partner. They hand their work in to be checked, but not graded (since it's practice).