Student Wellbeing
Using Open Ended Questions with Children
Open ended questions cannot be responded to with one word answers such as yes or no. These types of questions enables a child to provide a more detailed response and encourages a child to stimulate their thinking and develop their language skills. Open ended questions supports a child to focus and make meaning of their experiences and enables them to see various possibilities.
Benefits of Open Ended Questions
While engaging in conversation and you ask a child open ended questions, it shows that you are interested about what they are doing. Open ended questions encourages a child to:
- develop their language by using different words and a wider range of vocabulary to answer the question
- provide more information and details
- express their thoughts, ideas and opinions
- be creative
- develop positive relationships by engaging in meaningful conversations
How to Ask Open Ended Questions
During the day, it’s important that we ask questions to children, about their activities and every day encounters. Using open ended questions, can help a child to grow as they begin to think about how they approach, plan, carry and extend upon their own ideas. To encourage a child to think about their learning and to develop their language skills, the following open ended questions can be asked:
- Tell me about what you’re doing?
- Why do you think…?
- How do you know…?
- Why do you think this happened?
- What will happen next?
- How did this happen?
- What can you do about it?
- What do you think would work?
- How do you think it could work?
- Can you do it another way?
- How are these the same?
- How are these different?
- What do you think comes next?
- What else can you do?
- What does it remind you of?
- I wonder why…
- Why did you…
- How did you do that?
- Show me how you…?
- Tell me about…
- Is there another way to….?
- Why do you say that….
While answering open ended question a child needs to have a particular level of verbal skills. This is because open ended questions have a variety of different possible responses. You don’t know what the response is going to be. A child would more eagerly answer if they are able to effectively communicate and know a range of vocabulary.
Questions to Challenge Thinking
Challenging children to think by asking thought provoking open ended questions can expand and enrich a child’s cognitive, creative and language development. Open ended questions that challenge thinking include:
Making Predictions – What do you will happen...
Extend on Thinking – What would happen if there were...
Consider Consequences – What would happen if you jumped and I wasn’t there to catch you?
Assess feelings – How would you feel if that happened to you? How do you think ... feels?
Similarities and Differences – How are these the same? What makes these go together? What make these different?
Solving problems – What could you do to...
Evaluate – What made you decide...
(taken from Aussie Childcare Network - www.aussiechildcarenetwork.com.au )
Seasons Program
We are offering students in our school an opportunity to participate in the Seasons Program which has been designed to help children deal with change through their experience of grief. This could be in the form of the death of a family member, impact of illness, separation of parents or moving to another place.
See below for a fact sheet on the program and if you think your child/children could benefit from a program such as this please contact me by Monday 27th May.
amcnaughton@srprestonwest.catholic.edu.au