Asking Questions

While reading with your little one, stopping to ask reflective questions can make storytime a lot more engaging and fruitful. Questions can serve as opportunities for your child to strengthen certain key early literacy skills. At first, it may seem counterintuitive to spend less time reading and more time talking, but this practice can be essential for making the most out of these sessions.

Here’s a few examples of questions that can be asked at nearly any point in a story: “What do you think will happen next?” … “Why did the character do that?” … “What was the best part of this story so far? Why?” … Questions like these can boost your child’s narrative skills, which refers to the ability to understand stories.

You can also make the questions story-specific. For example, you could ask: “What sound would [a specific animal-based character] make?/How would [a specific character] talk?” … “Where are the characters right now?” … “What is [specific character] doing right now?“ …

Lastly, you can point to certain letters, numbers, words, punctuation marks, or physical parts of the book and the ask “What is this?” This practice can help build letter knowledge, numeracy, vocabulary, and print awareness. At the end of the story, to help further develop narrative skills, you can ask questions such as “What happened in this story?” or “What’s another way that this story could have ended?”

Reference(s):

State Library of Queensland. "Shared Reading Time: Stop, Pause, and Linger." First 5 Forever Blog, State Library of Queensland, https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/first5forever/blog/shared-reading-time-stop-pause-and-linger.