“Mommy, why is the sky blue? Mommy, how come you make me eat carrots? Mommy, if I eat too many carrots will my poop be orange? Mommy, can you read me a story? Mommy, can I have a drink? Mommy Is the snow deeper than my boots? Mommy, do the birds eat the snow? Mommy, when will it be time for Daddy to come home? Mommy, would Daddy make me eat carrots?”
Anyone else remember the question stage of toddlerhood too well? After having gone through it four times pretty much in succession, I wasn’t sure we were ever going to be out of that stage but alas like all stages it did come to an end.
This week as we headed into our newest comprehension strategy, I was longing for the days of old. I was wishing that each of the boys could pull back the curtain of time and tap into their previous curiosity about everything. Well, at least a little bit. You see, as we get older we tend to be less curious and we observe things with less awe and wonder and this week I needed them to have that awe and wonder as we are exploring asking questions as we read.
Asking questions is a key strategy for thoughtful readers. Our questions are the key to digging deeper into a text in ways that are personal. Questions show us gaps in our schema and help us to acknowledge what we truly are looking to learn about. As we ask questions we bring to the front of our consciousness things to be looking for. It opens us up for pulling details together into what will become an inference but I’m getting ahead of myself.
When we first start talking about asking questions, we always write down all of the questions that come to our minds as we are reading. Questioning bookmarks are our favorite way to keep track of our questions because we can literally write our question and put it right into that spot in the book – you can find the bookmarks we use here. This is similar to when we start talking about metacognition – aka thinking about thinking. This type of brain dumping while it may seem counterproductive truly matters as we teach ourselves to listen to our own brains.
After brain dumping or word vomiting our questions for a few days we start to evaluate the questions that come to mind because there are questions that are useful for reading and those that are just out there curiosities. A useful question to ponder would be something like “I wonder why the character chose to do that.” or “I wonder how the boy felt about that.” or “I wonder if they will choose to allow other people to join their game.” Where out there curiosities sound more like “I wonder why the illustrator made his hat red.” or “I wonder why his name is George.” Oddly enough, sometimes these out there curiosities do end up mattering but as a general rule they do not.
Once you’ve gone through these two steps you are well on your way to asking questions like a truly thoughtful reader. Next week, I will be coming here to talk about what exactly we do with the questions that we have learned to ask so check back here on the blog, join us on the socials – Facebook, Instagram and Threads – or even better, join our email list to figure out exactly where all this is going and how it is going to strengthen our understanding of the books we are reading.
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