One of the first things a student learns is how to turn a statement into a question. The simplest form is to put "do" or "does" at the beginning of the sentence, which turns it into a yes/no question.¹

Tom likes cats.

Does Tom like dogs?

Yes, Tom likes dogs.

Not all questions can be answered with "yes" or "no", so there is another way to form questions, by starting with a question word, like "who", "what" or "when", then following it with a helping verb in the proper tense, then the subject, then the main verb and other words. There's a name for this: subject-auxiliary inversion. Which just means that you take the subject of the sentence, and the auxiliary (another name for helping verbs) and invert them (make them switch places). If the sentence doesn't have an auxiliary verb, use a form of "do". An example:

What has she eaten?

She has eaten tacos.

The pattern is pretty simple, but in practice it can get confusing, because there are a lot of different question words, and several different helping verbs, with different forms, and different subjects can only go with certain forms of the verb. To help you practice choosing the right form, your friends at Grumbly Games have made a question wheel. Press the buttons around the outside of the wheel to turn the rings and line up the words to start a question.

When you use the wheel, the thing to keep in mind is that this only starts a question. You almost always need at least a main verb to complete the question. So, if I spin the wheels and choose, "What", "have" and "you", I still need to add another verb before I have a meaningful question:

What have you eaten?

I have eaten six apples.

The wheel has colored outlines around some verb forms and the same colors around the pronouns on the inner wheel to indicate which forms and pronouns can be used together. You should also remember that certain helping verbs have to have the correct verb forms following them.

• have, has and had are always followed by the past participle (third form) of a main verb to form the present perfect and past perfect: I have eaten
• do, does and did are always followed by the root form of a main verb: I do eat; the helping verb "do" is needed to form questions, but is not needed most of the time when making normal statements: I eat
• am, is, are, was and were can be used with the progressive (-ing) form of a verb to make the present progressive and past progressive tenses: I am eating / was eating; they can also be used with the past participle to form the passive voice: I was eaten

Forms of "to be" can also be used on their own in questions as the main verb (they're not just helping verbs).

What is he? He is a vampire.

¹ Notice, that when you add a form of "do", it functions as a helping verb, so "likes" becomes "like". When using helping verbs and main verbs together, only the helping verb shows tense. (The "s" at the end of 3rd person singular verbs only happens in the present tense.)