5 Questions to Ask in Every Read Aloud!
Developing comprehension skills is something we can do from the very beginning of our literacy instruction and it will set students up for lifelong success.
When we begin comprehension instruction, we are working on comprehension strategies that the students can use when listening to text.
Reading from authentic literature is so important. It allows students the opportunity to engage with text and stories and is often a favorite part of literacy time. Not only is it a student favorite, but it also is a fantastic way to model your own thinking as you read so students can begin applying these strategies to their own reading as they progress.
When we are focusing on listening comprehension, it's still helpful to point to the words you are reading while you are reading them, so that students see the correlation between the words on the page and what you are reading to them.
You can point out specific letters, phonics patterns, high-frequency words, or whatever skill you are working on from a phonics perspective during a read-aloud.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way - let’s get to the five questions we want to ask in every read-aloud.
QUESTIONS:
1. What details do we know?
Who is the story about? What are they doing? When is it happening? Where is it happening? Why is it happening?
These 5 Ws questions are excellent questions to ask as you are reading through the story (this supports direct recall from the text)!
2. What happened in the beginning, middle, and end?
Being able to think about sequence and order of events is so helpful for students and will help them to make sense of the information (this is where we begin to organize those details)!
3. How do you think they are feeling? Have you ever felt this way? What can you connect?
Much like why questions, how questions often delve deeper into comprehension and get the kids thinking about their feelings and their own thinking! This is where we can really begin to develop metacognitive / executive functioning skills!
4. What do you think they will do next?
This is always a fun one! It’s where we begin to “make leaps with information!” It brings in the technique of prediction and forces kids to think back on what has already happened in the story in order to make a logical guess as to what will happen next. If you find your students are giving you answers that are not logical or not at all connecting to the text, then use follow-up questions to understand their thinking.
5. What do you think is the moral of this story?
What did the main character learn? - Depending on your book you may need to phrase this differently or more like a general summary question, such as what do I take away or what was the key message?
Hopefully, you find these questions helpful for the next time you are doing a read-aloud with your students.
Grab our Reading Comprehension Strategy Bookmarks to help keep these questions top of mind! They are great to use as visual anchors for your students and to share with parents so they can be working on these skills at home!
Looking for more tips and tricks on developing early literacy skills through read-alouds? Check out our video below!
