I have a Question, Now What?

Last week I told you all that I wanted my kids to pretend they were two again and ask all the questions – if you missed it the blog post can be found here. And boy did they take to it! They have jumped strongly with two feet into throwing a million questions out during our read alouds and in their individual reading times tied to their novel and book studies. While they may have gone a bit overboard and I may have had to bust out a sand sift as an object lesson to reel them back in, we have thoroughly explored asking questions as a thoughtful reading strategy. But then the most important part of this reading strategy came to the surface –

What do we do these questions we are asking?

Asking questions while reading is great but if you just leave the questions on the table, do they really do you any good? I would venture to say not much. The entire point of learning to ask questions is to then search for possible answers to those questions.

The first place I encourage readers to look for answers to their questions about the text they’re reading is in their own schema. We can find more possible answers in our schemas than we give ourselves credit for. Notice that I keep using the phrase possible answers because the point of asking questions is not to immediately jump on the correct answer or even to worry about the correct answer until we get a chance to read on. Rather the point is to open our minds to what is in our schema as well as what could be coming next. That’s right, asking questions is about helping us understand our personal schema better and making stronger predictions.

After, and only after, a reader has considered the answers to be found in his or her schema, he or she should move on to reading more of the book searching out clues and additional possible answers held within the rest of the text. These extra clues can be used to add to or narrow down possible answers.

It’s just that simple. We learn to ask questions while reading so we can expose and challenge our own schema and so we can make stronger predictions. Both of these strategies pull us further into our reading making reading an immersive and interactive experience, which in the end dramatically increases our understanding of the text and the enjoyment we experience while reading.

Curious to learn more about all of the thoughtful reading strategies? You should join the email list and follow Smart Simple Homeschool on social media –  Facebook, Instagram and Threads. These groups get special exclusive content each and every week. I also regularly share homeschooling tips and tricks as well as funny stories from our homeschooling journey with these communities. Until next time, keep it smart. Keep it simple.