By Ms. Acin, Elementary Teacher

The average children’s Book only takes 5 minutes to read to your child.

You can enhance your child’s experience with  books greatly by taking a few extra minutes before, during, and after reading by discussing the following questions together. You can also model complete responses by answering questions yourself after your child gives responses. 

Discussion Questions for Fiction books: 

•  Looking at the cover of this book and the title, what do you think it’s going to be about? 
•  Who are the characters in this book? 
• What is the setting/where does it take place? 
• What was the problem in the story? How did they fix it? 
• What would you do if you had this problem? 
• Which character would you like to be friends with? Why? ∙ Do you see any words you know on this page? 
• Help them sound out simple three letter words or let them complete the  rhyme if it’s a rhyming book. 
• Have your child point out any punctuation marks and see if they can name  them. 
• How did the story end? 
•  If there was one more page, what do you think would happen?   
• Are you like the main character? Why or why not? 
• What parts of the story could really happen?        
•  What will happen next in the story? 
• Discuss the pictures. Point out if the illustrator used lots of different  colors, filled up the whole space, and if they added lots of details.  

Comprehension of stories takes practice! You can ask these questions even if  you’ve read a certain book several times. Happy Reading!