How to Encourage First Graders to Ask and Answer Questions About What They Read?

For utmost development of the cognition in children, it is important that they are taught how to question things from what they read. But it is something that they won't develop overnight, you will have to continuously work on building their questioning muscle. Here are a few tips that might help you do that.

Create Curiosity

A child is a curious soul. To challenge their conventional thinking, you can read the passage in a provocative manner. You can use pictures with obvious details so that they ask questions regarding it. Another tip to ignite the curiosity of children while reading is that you can miss reading some parts of the story. It would make them curious about the missing part and they would start questioning.

Ask Questions Yourself

Children learn a lot from their elders. If you want them to ask and answer questions about what they read, then set a good example yourself. You can do so by conducting a reading activity in the class. After you are done reading, you can ask some thought provoking open ended questions from the children. Be accepting and open to every answer that you get from the child. It encourages them to express their thoughts without hesitation.

Brainstorm Questions

You can use a mind mapping tool to allow brainstorming of questions about what you have just read to the class. Questions will develop from other questions and soon they will be a complete web of questions. While creating questions, do not jump quickly on the answers, but wait till plenty of questions are made.

Allow Time

Give children plenty of time to think about the questions and answers as well. Allow them to make every effort they can to come up with good questions.

Understanding Text from Short Stories

I always loved quick stories as a student who ever would forget the stories brought to us by Aesop? They help take us out of our world for a short stint and really take us to entire different world. It is like television for our imaginations. These worksheets will help students understand how to dissect and grasp the key parts of any short story they may come across.

How to Approach Answering Questions from Written Text

One of the very common activities that many students from all grades face in their student lives is the answering of questions from given texts. You are usually given a huge random reading passage that contains a story, biography, or any other sort of information and then you are asked different questions in the end. Here are some quick and easy to follow tips to help you have a higher level of success with these types of activities.

Look at the questions before reading

If you already know the questions that you would have to answer after reading the passage, then this is a very helpful technique. Take a few minutes to read and understand the questions given in the end. Memorize them if you can. You have to do this before starting to read the passage. After you are done memorizing the questions, then start reading the passage. Make sure that you do not divert your attention while reading otherwise you can miss important points. You will notice the answers to the questions as you begin to read. Underline those answers with a mark or number of the question so that you won't have to go through the entire passage again after you are done with the reading. Reread those underlined answers again and understand the context. Then write the answer in your own words. This will help you in answering the questions easily.

Look for evidence

Your answer would have no credibility if there is no evidence in it. When you are given a passage, it is very easy to add evidence in your answer. Understand the question by reading it thoroughly and then search for any relevant evidence in the passage. You can use the exact facts and figures mentioned in the passage to make your answer look good.