By Eunice Torralba, Researcher

Do you love reading stories to your child? Children love listening to stories, but storytelling can also be challenging since it’s not easy to get their attention for a long time. And so, as parents, it is important to know what questions you can ask them during storytelling to enhance their reading comprehension and make storytelling a more fun experience for them!

Here are some tips and questions you can ask your child before, during, and after storytelling:

Pre-reading

To catch your child’s attention, it is important to properly introduce the story in a creative way, such as creating an imaginary world of the story in your child’s mind.

This way, your child will be more excited and interested in listening to you.

Before reading, you should also keep in mind to maintain interaction with your child because it is one of the important things in helping them learn more and enjoy listening to your stories. To create interaction, you should ask questions to your child.

There are two types of questions that you can ask your child - close and open-ended questions. Close-ended questions can be simply answered by a “yes” or “no” or by the available information and existing knowledge. These questions are helpful, especially in pre-reading, because it is when you start to provide the background or context of the story that will make your child more interested.

Some close-ended questions you can ask your child are:

● Are you feeling better today?
● Do you love dinosaurs? (If the story is about dinosaurs)
● Do you like the book cover?

On the other hand, open-ended questions require a more detailed answer. The answers to these questions are based on personal viewpoints, so answers differ from person to person. Asking these questions also creates a longer conversation and engages your child more. It also shows that you trust your child in contributing their own ideas.

Some open-ended questions you can ask your child are:

● What do you think will happen in the story?
● What do you love about the book cover?
● What do you think the cover tells you about the story?
● Which part of the book cover do you find most interesting?

During the reading

When you read books to your child, make sure you maintain eye contact and have proper voice modulation. Instead of just reading the story, make it more interesting by trying to talk the way the characters speak. With this, your child will most likely pay attention throughout the storytelling session.

It is also when your child starts to ask many questions and may interrupt you while you’re speaking, but this is a good sign that your child is attentive and listening. So, just allow them to ask and patiently answer their questions. To keep their attention, you can also ask questions from time to time.

Some close-ended questions you can ask your child are:

● Do you agree with what the character did?
● Do you also want to visit this place?
● Has this happened to you?

Some open-ended questions you can ask your child are:

● Why do you think the character did that?
● Why do you want to visit this place?
● Why do you think the character feels that way?

Post-reading

After reading a story to your child, it is time to process and connect it to their real-life experiences. With this, your child can easily remember and retell the story to someone.

A close-ended question you can ask your child is, “Did you enjoy the story?”.

To process the story, you can also ask some open-ended questions to your child, such as:

● What makes you like your favorite character?
● What do you think the story is teaching us?
● What have you learned?
● Why do you like that part of the story?

For more open-ended questions, check out this article here.

Storytelling is one of the things that you can do to spend a fun and meaningful time with your child! Aside from helping your child develop their reading comprehension by asking questions during storytelling, you can also use this opportunity to get to know your child more. Don’t worry if you cannot ask all the sample questions mentioned above! What’s important is that you engage your child and allow them to share their own insights.

Here at The Learning Library, we offer various online reading classes, such as storytelling, for ages 4-17. Our program focuses on love of reading, critical thinking, grammar, speaking, and other fundamental language skills that have applications in school. If you’d like to have additional help, send a message to The Learning Library through inquiries@learninglibraries.com or visit our website.