Having deep, rich conversations with children helps them develop language skills, conversational skills and reasoning skills that will help them be successful in school.
Once the conversation begins, you can keep it going. See it like a tennis match. The ball keeps going over the net between both of you many times like a tennis volley. So often, our talk with children is just a serve and a return – you say something and they answer. Challenge yourself to long volleys instead!
Questions that get children to think are great ways to get a conversation started. Here is a list that came from a recent reflective practice group exercise:
Open ended questions/starters
What would happen if…
What do you think this book might be about?
Do you need anything else?
What do you need to get started?
How does that work?
How did that happen?
What is another way we could do that?
Can you think of…
How will you start?
What is your plan?
What’s happening?
How could you get that out?
How do you think we could fix that?
Want do you think happens next?
What could we do?
What do you think made this happen?
What should we put in this space?
How do you think…
What do you think about…
What made you think of that?
What are some ways…
How could we…
What else could we…
What else can you think of to…
What is another way to…
What is another way we could…
Do you have any ideas about…
What ideas can you think of for…
I wonder if there are other ways – what do you think?
How could we figure that out?
What would we need to…
Help me figure out…
What are your best ideas about…
I bet you have an idea about…
I need help figuring out…
What would be the best way to…
How many ways could we…
What are some other ideas about this?
How do you think we could…
Why do you think that this…
What do you think?
How did you figure that out?
Tell me how…
Tell me when…
Tell me why…
Keep it going with simple prompts: And?….. And then what?….. Then?….. What happened next?.....
No comments:
Post a Comment