Kindergarten children are learning to express themselves so that others understand what they are thinking. This is new for many as they have had 5 years of Mom and Dad knowing what they are going to say, understanding what has been said and often even finishing sentences for them. Then they come to school. When a child gives me a correct answer, I will ask him/her, “How did you know that?” and almost all of the time the answer will be “I just do” or “I always knew that”. Formulating thoughts is very challenging for Kindergartners and they need us to help them learn how to do it. Listen to the conversations that you have with our own child and always try to encourage more words and thoughts from your child. Please do not let them answer you in short simple sentences. Try not to ask your child questions with one word answers. Keep probing. Ask open ended questions that will tell you how your child is thinking and feeling. Here are some samples of questions:
Not open ended: What color is your block?
Open ended: Tell me about what you are building.
Here are some sites with sample open ended questions for you to start using with your own child. Not all of the questions will be ‘just right’ for 5 and 6 year olds, but read through them and I am sure that you will find many that will be perfect for you to use with your child.
http://www.raisingcreativechildrennow.com/?p=24
Top 50 open ended questions:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Top-50-Open-Ended-Questions-for-Sparking-Conversation-With-Kids
Top 100 open ended questions:
http://life.familyeducation.com/communication/family-time/36021.html?page=3&detoured=1
I love your blog and all the relevant information on it! With a kindergartner (a 2nd grader and 2 preschoolers) myself, I always enjoy learning more ways to tune in to their learning and where they are developmentally. Thanks for taking the time to help us all be better parents and educators to our children!
Thanks for writing. My hope is that parents and teachers will be able to pick up some useful tips from reading my blog. Glad you are enjoying it and picking up some tips yourself!
My 5-yo daughter has a lot of trouble with this. To the point that she’s not finishing her writing assignments. Her K teacher expects them to not only come up with a “I like ‘a’, because ‘b’” type sentences, she also expects them to write the sentence with very little monitoring (with correct punctuation and capitalization.)
When finishing these assignments at home, I find she has lots of trouble coming up with a sentence to begin with, much less retaining it half way through writing it.
I have started making her come up with three good things that happen at school everyday, for the last week it’s been like pulling teeth to get her three out. But I’m making her think – which she really doesn’t like to do. Maybe at some point I’ll even make her write them. But for now it takes good amount of time to tell me what happened at school.
You are doing the right thing by asking her to think about her day…you could prompt with questions also, such as, what songs did you sing, what books did you read, what friends did you play with..just to get her used to the line of questioning and then venture out to ‘how did you feel” or why did you like the book?As for correct punctuation and capitalization..hmmm seems like that is pushing it a little for mid year in Kindergarten. We do have to remember that these little brains are only 5 years old and can only developmentally do so much. No wonder your daughter is not enjoying school she is really stressing over this writing which will backfire and make her not like writing at all. We do teach about capitalization and periods but don’t expect it from most of the kids…we introduce these skills and keep reviewing but it is developmental and not all kids are ready for it. let me know if I can be of any other help..Claire