Reading Strategy: Questioning

Of course it is difficult for me to separate my home and school life. Our school's reading strategy for the month of February was Questioning. I find that I ask my own child a lot of questions (poor girl), but this month I have been extra focused on expanding on those answers she gives me. For example, she LOVES Dr. Seuss books, but has a whole lot of questions about the silly words, the crazy phrases and ridiculous pictures. As I have been trying to answer her "whys" and "what is that" questions, I have been trying to be as honest as I can about the answers. One of her favorites is  I Can Read With My Eyes Shut. When it reads "I can read in pickle color too!", she asks, "Why do they call it pickle color?" Well, we then have a conversation about what color pickles are, why she doesn't like pickles, why books would have green words, green is "Titan at preschool's favorite color," etc. What great dialogue to have! She is making tons of connections with books and her world.

If you are wondering how to start those conversations and to ask the right questions, see below: Enjoy!

Questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about the content of what is read

Becoming an active reader will help your child comprehend their reading better. Teaching readers to ask themselves questions as they read will help them concentrate better. Besides improving their concentration, they will also be able to determine how well they have understood what they have read, find the areas they don’t understand yet, connect information to what they already know and improve their memory.

As parents, you can help your students learn to ask themselves questions by asking them first. It is important to ask your child several different types of questions to encourage various levels of understanding.

So what do you ask? Here are some examples:

Who?

Where?

Which one?

What?

How?

Why?

How much?

How many?

When?

What does it mean?

What happened after?

What is the best one?

Can you name all the…?

Who spoke to …?

Which is true or false?

What does this mean?

Which are the facts?

Is this the same as …?

Give an example of…

Select the best definition:

Condense this paragraph.

What would happen if …?

Explain why . . .

What expectations are there?

Read the graph (table) and find…

What are they saying?

This represents . . .

What seems to be …?

Is it valid that …?

What seems likely?

Which statements support …?

What could have happened next?

When you ask the questions is just as important as what the questions are. Be sure to ask questions before your child reads, during the reading and after they are finished. Here are some sample questions:

Questions to ask before reading:

·         What is the title of the book?

·         What does the cover tell you about the book?

·         What do you think the book is about?

·         What do you already know about his book?

·         What do you want to learn?

·         Why are you reading this book?

Questions to ask during reading:

·         What do you think will happen next?

·         What is the problem in the story?

·         Why do you think the character did that?

·         When reading this part, what were you picturing in your head?

Questions to ask after reading:

·         Describe the setting of the story.

·         Describe how a character changed throughout the book.

·         Which of the characters did you like best? Why?

·         What were some of the problems or situations the characters encountered?

·         Tell about a part that you liked or disliked and tell why?