#7 open ended questions
You may have noticed that I add questions to a lot the activities. Most of those questions are open ended. An open ended question is one that has no right answer (more importantly, no wrong answer) and requires kids to think. “I see you’re building a track; can you tell me about this area?” “Why do you think the illustrator decided to make this picture green?” “That girl looks so sad. What might have happened to make her so sad? What might cheer her up?”
Open ended questions are important because they force kids to give more than a yes or no answer. With a simple question they are building listening skills (to give a full answer you have to actually hear the question), thinking skills, and language skill.
Try out some open ended questions and post them here. I can’t wait to hear all about your experience!
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With my 2 and a half yo, we will often use the question “What do you think he/she is saying?” for characters in his story books – particularly on pages with no dialogue. It took him a while at first to get the idea, but now he often comes up with possible conversations on his own, often no more complex than “Hello”, or ” ‘Bye”, but sometimes more extensive. He often initiates questions and conversations about feelings, especially if he thinks a book character is distressed, so we usually discuss that too.
A good one for older children (like my 6 yo) is “What would you have done in this situation?”, or, particularly for the first time you read a book, stopping before the ending and asking “How would you like this story to end?”.
I love those questions!!! “What would you have done in this situation?” is fantastic. I bet that inspires a very thought out response!