One way that you can support your children’s education is by reading with them. At the primary school level, supporting students to develop their reading skills is a major focus. The more reading that children can do at school and at home the better! There are many texts that are engaging to kids but picture books are an example of a particularly engaging text type. Whether it be the rhythms of Dr Zeus or the magical worlds in Shaun Tan’s picture books– many picture books have a certain power to evoke intrigue and wonder. Reading is not a passive process, one way in which readers actively engage with texts is through questioning. There are many questions that you can ask young readers while they are reading. But in this post, I am going to focus on three types of questions.
Firstly, let us consider ‘thin questions’, thin questions are questions like yes and not questions which do not require many words to respond to. They typically reference information that is explicitly included in the text. Some examples of ‘thin questions include the following: did the man catch the ball? What colour is harry’s hair? Such questions can support young readers to think about what they are reading. If they answer it incorrectly it may be useful to tune their attention to cues in the text like the pictures or key phrases in the text that can assist them to decode the text.
The second type of questions is ‘I wonder questions’. Consider the following questions. I wonder why the boy was excited to see his dad? I wonder why the author did not tell us if the two characters reunited or not? These types of questions can support children to think more deeply about the text and can support them to form their own personal connections or interpretations of familiar texts
Thirdly, let us consider ‘big questions’. What is the key theme of the text? What issues do you think the author is concerned with etc. This type of questions can support children to make text-to-world connections. They can also support high order thinking skills. Such questions, can be especially appropriate for experienced readers in years 5 and 6. Yes, even in the later year levels appropriate picture books do have their place! I hope this post has given you some ideas about how to use questioning to support your children with their reading. Happy reading!