When reading a story to children, educators can help develop the children's language skills even more by asking questions while reading the story. This also makes the story time less boring.
The official word for asking questions when reading a story is "dialogic storytelling". This means having a conversation while reading.
There are 3 levels of questions that you can ask the children. The first two levels are about the book and then the third level takes you beyond the book and into the children's own lives and what they already know (their funds of knowledge).
Level 1: What do you see? and other "WHAT" questions
These are some of the types of questions you could ask:
What animals do you see on the cover?
What is the rabbit doing?
What colours do you see?
What is a scarecrow?
What else do you see?
Level 2: Going deeper into the book
These are some of the things you can do to help the children develop their language skills through the book reading:
Explain some of the words in the book
Ask the children to repeat your explanation
Repeat some of the lines in the book and ask the children to repeat them
Pause before a rhyming word that the children might know and let them finish off the line for you
Speak slowly
Say something wrong so the children can correct you!
Level 3: Relate the book to the children's experiences
For example:
Reading a book about a veggie patch, a child might say "we have a veggie patch!"
Instead of saying "oh yeah, that's nice" and moving on, you could continue the conversation and it could go something like this:
"Oh really, what's in your veggie patch?"
"Broccoli"
"Broccoli looks like little trees"
"Do broccoli grow up or down?"
"What would happen next?"
"What's your favourite vegetable?"
So basically, you are giving the children prompts to have a conversation about the book, just like Kate, you like having little prompts when you are having a conversation too. It is a bit like doing a "See Think Wonder" during story time.
TASK: Read one of your Feelings Book to your coach. Pretend your coach is the children. Ask your coach some questions about the book using the above examples. See if you can have a conversation about the book while you are reading it but make sure you stay on the topic.
Comments