Asking Good Questions

Here are some tips for asking good questions after your child has read something to ensure they have understood and thought about what they read.

There are seven strategies commonly associated with active reading:

Remembering - remembering what happened in the story or text
Connecting - associating the text with something they already know or have experienced
Visualizing- imagining the story in their head (like a movie)
Questioning - wondering about story details or information provided throuth the text
Inferring - using clues not specifically stated in the story or text to determine other information (ie. the girl looks sad in the picture, even though the text does not say specifically that she is sad)
Summarizing - being able to pull out the key points or events from a text or story
Predicting - using information available in the story to predict what might happen next and why

Questions before reading

"What clues does the title give me about the story?"

"Is this a real or imaginary story?"

"Why am I reading this?"

"What do I already know about___?"

"What predictions can I make?"

*Have your child preview the pictures in the story without reading the words and explain what they think might happen in the story

"What do I understand from what I just read?"

"What is the main idea?"

"What picture is the author painting in my head?"

"Do I need to reread so that I understand?"

"Which of my predictions were right? What information from the text tells me that I am correct?"

"What were the main ideas?"

"What connections can I make to the text? How do I feel about it?"

*Ask your child to start at the beginning and retell you what happened in the story without looking at the pictures

reading_prompts_for_small_group_instruction_blackline.pdf

This guide gives detailed questions to ask for a fiction text.