Comprehension Strategies

It is key to ask your child questions before, during and after reading with them. No matter what questions you ask, lookout for questions that increase your talking about the book. Here are few examples of questions that you could ask.

• Factual questions ask for details about the text: "When does this story take place?" or "What kind of bird is this?"
• Inferential questions encourage children to read between the lines of the text: "Why do hockey players wear skates?"
• Opinion questions invite children to tell you what they think: "What do you think about that?" or "What did you think of the book?"
• Text-to-self questions bridge the text to the child's own experience: "How did you feel when that happened to you?"
• Text-to-text questions bridge the text to another text the child has read: "Is this like another book that we've read?"
• Prediction questions ask children to tell you what might happen next: "What do you think the bird is going to do with the twig?" or "What do you think the author will teach us about next?"
• Authorship questions ask children to think like the author: "What would you have David do if you wrote the story?"
• Vocabulary questions ask children what they know about a word: "What do you think the word glare means?"

The words that are used may seem too complicated for a kindergartener. The truth is that when they start doing guided reading their teachers will be using these words all the time. Why not start now. Well I hope these ideas have given you a starting point. Go have a great time reading to your kindergartener.