Questions to ask a second grader: 9 Cool Questions to Ask Your Kid | Scholastic
15 Questions to Ask Your Child’s Teacher
Editor’s Note: These questions are focused on general in-classroom learning, we encourage parents to voice any COVID safety questions and concerns with your child’s school or teacher.
Sending your not-so-little child off to school can be overwhelming and worrisome, whether it’s their first time or their fourth. Each new year brings changes—new friends, teachers, environments, and expectations. It’s normal to be concerned for your child and to wonder how they will adjust and respond to the new school year.
As a parent, what you can do is be an informed and active participant in your child’s education. Parents play the most major role in a child’s life, regardless of how many hours they are away from you during the day. How you react and respond to school, teachers, and learning will directly impact your child’s views of the same things.
Having a strong relationship with your child’s teacher is one of the most important things you can do. By keeping good, positive, open communication with your child’s teacher, you will learn how to better support your child’s learning throughout the year.
If you’re at a loss for what to ask your child’s teacher to get the conversation going, here are 15 of the questions we love to ask at the beginning of the school year.
1. How do you assess student progress?
Many schools have formal academic assessments, while others assess more informally through student work and observations. Some schools do a combination of both. It helps to know how your child will be assessed, so you know what to expect.
2. What one thing should I help my child improve and work on?
The answer to this question might change as the teacher gets to know your child more throughout the school year, but even in the beginning of the year, having a general focal point for what to encourage at home (i.e. following directions, mealtime routines, literacy, etc. ) is a good starting point.
3. What can I do to support the work you’re doing in the classroom?
This question lets the teacher know you’re on their side—that you simply want to help your child in any way that you can.
Source: @jlgarvin
4. What is the best way for me to contact you?
When I was teaching, so many parents would innocently try to have a serious conversation during drop-off or pick-up times. For many reasons (the main one being there is a slew of other children around to keep an eye on), this was not a great time. So, be clear on how or when is the best method of communication between parents and teacher. This way, your child’s teacher can give you thoughtful, relevant feedback to your questions without feeling harried or caught-off-guard.
5. What are the most important ideas or concepts my child has to understand by the end of the year?
This will give you a good gauge of what’s most important for this school year, whether it’s an important social skill, a method of thinking, or an actual academic concept.
6. How are creativity and innovative thinking promoted in the classroom?
Creativity and innovative, critical thinking are both skills that set the foundation for learning and ability to problem-solve in the future, so they are definitely ones that you want to be prioritized and pushed in the classroom.
7. How can I support literacy at home?
Sometimes parents think that promoting literacy at home consists of pushing your kids to learn to read and setting aside time for extra practice for reading and writing. But, it could just mean making sure that reading and writing are respected at home and that your child uses foundational skills (like, flipping through books on their own and drawing/painting regularly) are encouraged.
Source: @occasions.byshakira
8. What questions do you suggest I ask my kids on a daily basis about school?
We’ve all been caught in the “So, how was school today?” cycle, and let’s face it, nothing good ever comes from that question. Your child’s teacher can guide in what sort of specifics you can ask about, making those after-school conversations with your kids so much more meaningful.
9. How is learning personalized in your classroom?
Every child learns in a different way, so differentiation of instruction and appealing to multiple styles of learning is really important. Hearing your child’s teacher speak to this will give you a little peace of mind that your little one’s needs are accounted for.
10. What are common barriers to overall classroom success that you often see?
To be completely honest, common barriers to success often have nothing to do with the children themselves, but sometimes their environments and, ahem, their parents. External environmental stress and pressure can have a huge impact on a kid’s ability to learn, so being clear with the teacher about your child’s life is always a good idea.
11. What’s your perspective on homework?
Hearing what your child’s teacher says about homework will give you a good idea of her perspective on teaching and learning, overall. Homework can be a polarizing topic in the education and parenting realms, and many early childhood and elementary teachers feel very strongly about it.
Source: @thecuratedkids
12. What is your approach if a child is struggling socially?
Social struggles are very common amongst young children—this is the age where they are learning how to be people and succeed in a group setting. There will be ups and downs when it comes to your child’s social life, but knowing your child’s teacher approach to these things can help you feel reassured.
13. How universally accessible and culturally relevant is the curriculum and instruction?
As we know from our own childhoods, textbooks and curriculum are typically on the conservative side and may not include relevant facts or important areas of study. Because your little one is young and impressionable, it’s important to know what sorts of perspectives and concepts their early learning will bring.
14. What am I not asking but should be?
Be honest with your child’s teacher—if you want to be a constructive and involved member of your kid’s education, make it known that you, too, are there to learn and help and grow.
15. How can I help you?
Teachers have a lot on their plates—many students, hectic days, and often very little support. If there is any way that you can support your child’s teacher, know that you will be supporting your child’s education, as well. Any little bit helps, and even just the offer of help can mean the world to a teacher.
This article was originally published in 2018 and has been updated for timeliness.
Teaching Kids to Ask Questions
In my opinion, asking questions has always been one of the harder things that we have to teach in primary grades. Kids ask questions ALL the time, but when it comes to asking relevant questions about what they just read, it becomes difficult. I have always struggled with this standard, which is why I’m writing this blog post today. I’m hoping to give you some ideas if you, like me, struggle with teaching kids to ask questions before and after reading.
While it seems silly to teach a first or second grader the difference between a sentence and a question, it is quite necessary. The students likely know exactly how to ask their mom to buy them a piece of candy at the store. And they certainly know how to state that they are bored and want something else to play with. But when it comes to information and fictional text, it doesn’t come as easily. The questions they want to form are typically lacking text evidence.
Have them work on reading sentences and questions and sorting them.
Once the students have mastered the ability to differentiate between sentences and questions, it is very important for students to acknowledge that some questions are WEAK, and some questions are STRONG.
In my classroom, we would always ask questions, then determine if they were ‘easy-peasy’ questions or strong questions. Kids loved this because it made it more enjoyable for them to determine strong and weak questions.
Click the image above to find a cute article with four games to teach kiddos to ask and answer questions from Sandbox Learning.
Anchor charts are important to create WITH your students. As you create anchor charts on this topic, stop and have students discuss what you’ve written and introduced. This will make the anchor chart more accountable for them.
Teaching Kids to Ask Questions with Anchor Charts
Ask THEM to come up with question words for your anchor chart.
Lesson time. Start with a picture!
Show an image on the board. Have the students turn and ask a partner one
question about the picture and tell one sentence about the picture. Remind their partners to keep them responsible and accountable for using STRONG questions and not easy-peasy questions.
Modeling and Teaching Kids to Ask Questions
Modeling in the classroom is a necessary strategy. Many teachers give instructions and let students try it out on their own. While that may work for a large number of your students, kids also need to SEE their expectations, especially in primary school.
When teaching asking and answering questions, modeling is very critical so that students can see how to read their text, and stop throughout, asking meaningful questions.
Book Ideas!
My students have always been animal obsessed! So I stock up on as many animal books that I can through Scholastic! The ‘Who Would Win’ books are a hit with both my boys and girls. While allowing them to read, keep them accountable by giving them a partner to read to and ask questions with.
After you have let them explore real text, try to transition into passages. When starting the early stages of answering text-dependent questions, I always use color-coding strategies. For example, the picture above is a high-interest whale passage with six task cards. The task cards give specific directions, such as ‘Use your red crayon to underline who studies whales’.
Application of Teaching Kids to Ask Questions
Partner activities, whole group, small group, and independent work.
All of these things have to happen in order to teach students how to ask meaningful questions.
Take this partner activity for example…
Students are asked to work together to look at a fictional picture and write their own questions on a Post-it note. Then they will read the text together. and if they find those questions in the text, they have to underline it. Then they can answer the question using their knowledge from the text.
Passages are always great practice for asking and answering questions, especially when needing an assessment tool to see where the kiddos are at.
Check out these four resources for first and second grade fiction and nonfiction standards.
They come with 3 mini lessons in each, passages, printables, task cards, and an assessment.
- Kindergarten- RI.K.1
- First- RI.1.1
- Second- RI.2.1
- Third-RI.3.1
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30 Questions to Ask Your Kid Instead of “How Was Your Day?”
Parenthood
by ParentCo.
November 01, 2021
A conversation to debrief seems like such a great end to the school day. And yet! When I picked my son up from his first day of 4th grade, my usual (enthusiastically delivered) question of “how was your day?” was met with his usual (indifferently delivered) “fine.” Come on! It’s the first day, for crying out loud! Give me something to work with, would you, kid?
The second day, my same question was answered, “well, no one was a jerk.” That’s good…I guess. I suppose the problem is my own. That question actually sucks. Far from a conversation starter, it’s uninspired, overwhelmingly open ended, and frankly, completely boring. So as an alternative, I’ve compiled a list of questions that my kid will answer with more than a single word or grunt.
In fact, he debated his response to question 8 for at least half an hour over the weekend. The jury’s out until he can organize a foot race.
To get some conversation started even – or especially – when it feels like pulling teeth, here are some questions a kid will answer at the end of a long school day:
- What did you eat for lunch?
- Did you catch anyone picking their nose?
- What games did you play at recess?
- What was the funniest thing that happened today?
- Did anyone do anything super nice for you?
- What was the nicest thing you did for someone else?
- Who made you smile today?
- Which one of your teachers would survive a zombie apocalypse? Why?
- What new fact did you learn today?
- Who brought the best food in their lunch today? What was it?
- What challenged you today?
- If school were a ride at the fair, which ride would it be? Why?
- What would you rate your day on a scale of 1 to 10? Why?
- If one of your classmates could be the teacher for the day who would you want it to be? Why?
- If you had the chance to be the teacher tomorrow, what would you teach the class?
- Did anyone push your buttons today?
- Who do you want to make friends with but haven’t yet? Why not?
- What is your teacher’s most important rule?
- What is the most popular thing to do at recess?
- Does your teacher remind you of anyone else you know? How?
- Tell me something you learned about a friend today.
- If aliens came to school and beamed up 3 kids, who do you wish they would take? Why?
- What is one thing you did today that was helpful?
- When did you feel most proud of yourself today?
- What rule was the hardest to follow today?
- What is one thing you hope to learn before the school year is over?
- Which person in your class is your exact opposite?
- Which area of your school is the most fun?
- Which playground skill do you plan to master this year?
- Does anyone in your class have a hard time following the rules?
ParentCo.
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Five tips for parents to help improve communication with their child
Things are fine
Evening. Everyone gathers in the house after a hard day of work and school. Out of habit, I ask my 8-year-old son, second grader Artemy: “How are you?” “Fine,” I hear in response.
Have you eaten?
– Yes!
— Lessons learned?
– Yes!
Well, I’m definitely interested in grades. And then the dialogue is built depending on what is in the diary on a scale of two to five. Good grades – well done, bad –
a thrashing with the words: “What did I tell you: you need to do more! Take a textbook, let’s go storm the granite of science. And so from day to day.
Once I asked my youngest three-year-old Mishenka: how is he doing? In response, they also muttered to me: “Nomal”.
This word literally paralyzed me. The child copies everything he hears often. Conclusion: in my house there was a normal situation, but nothing more. His answer prompted a change in approach to nightly communication with offspring. I don’t want to be on duty. After all, all parents dream that the child shares his emotions about the first kiss, talks about his best friends, bright events during the day, and how does it happen that in response to “how are you” we are filtered with a dry “normal”.
I thought about what questions I should ask my children in order to establish trusting relationships with them and hear in detail how their day went – with all the sorrows, victories, ups and downs …
Talk to your children!
At the family council, my husband and I agreed to work together, discussed and introduced a new questionnaire. By the way, I turned to my friends on my social networks: what do you talk about with your children? And most of the answers were from the same range – “How are you? Have you eaten? Lessons done? And the time for communication with children from my opponents takes only… half an hour a day. And, according to adults, there is no way to fix this: work, household chores, no time.
To find out what the essence of our problem is, I talked to a family psychologist Larisa Vyzhva.
– Actually, this is a normal question – how are you? All dialogues of the world begin with it. The main thing is what sounds after. And then you should ask clarifying questions and continue the conversation. Talk to your kids! Tell yourself how your day went, share your experiences and joys – and they will be drawn to you. After work, we all want only peace and quiet. But is talking about this and that with your beloved son or daughter stressful? says the specialist.
The expert confirmed that it is indeed a difficult task for some working parents to take a sincere interest in their children’s affairs in our hectic and stressful everyday life. But it is the fathers and mothers who set up the microclimate in the family.
— How the most adult person is interested in the world depends on the child’s communication and trust in you. The common curiosity with him is the key to a bright relationship. You don’t have to ask questions, just have fun with them. Hiking, biking, planting flowers in the country or hanging a shelf in the house – sometimes doing things together builds trust better than intimate conversations.
But the main thing is not to engage in these trips with yourself, for example, not with barbecue, but rather to do something together. There are no universal recipes here. Parents themselves must look for that very point of support.
Together with a specialist, we nevertheless tried to deduce a few tips. If children do not share their joys and experiences with you, pay attention to the following points:
Mechanical interest
— Let me explain what this means, — says Larisa. – We are tired, we would rather take a shower and go to bed. But I’m a mother, and I have to ask how my child is doing. In this way, parents reduce their anxiety and put a mark on the list of important things. Only children really feel that all this communication is for show. No sincerity, everything is mechanical.
All the time we demand
“Why two? Why didn’t you do your homework? Didn’t wash the dishes? Take away the toys! Sit down for a book! We just don’t notice how we run into children all the time.
— And what is left for them to do? – says Larisa Vyzhva. – Fend off you in order to curtail communication in an accusatory tone.
“I wish she had left behind!” your son thinks while you are in command. It’s time to change tactics.
Turn on the mentoring tone
Think about how often you take the side of the child and what you say in response to his failures and mistakes. On the control I got a triple – and I said, it was necessary to repeat the material covered! The teacher put a failure for the behavior – it’s his own fault! This mentoring tone breaks the trust between you. But what if you just know the details and show sympathy?
We don’t share anything
— Adults should show an example of communication. We should tell you how we poured tea on a colleague at lunch, what a grumpy chef is at work, how we got into a terrible traffic jam or what we fed a cute dog at the entrance. Communication is an exchange of emotions. Start with yourself!
Questionnaire to help
You ask on duty – you get a duty answer. If you can’t come up with an interesting question yourself, we are ready to help you. These questionnaires have long been prepared by psychologists. Remember, we are building relationships with our kids, not they with us. And it is important to fulfill two roles: both the listener and the narrator. If you can go beyond ordinary communication and routine phrases and instead of the standard: “How are you at school?” ask questions from the list below, you will definitely learn a lot of new and interesting things about your daughter or son, and maybe about yourself.
Interesting questions instead of “How are you?”
— What was the most interesting event today?
— What new did you learn during the day?
— What made you smile today?
Who did something funny?
— What surprised you today?
Did you help anyone?
Has anyone done something nice for you?
-Are you proud of yourself today? Because of which?
— Were you sad?
— What was difficult or incomprehensible for you today?
— What did you play with your friends today?
— With whom did you sit at dinner today?
— Which of your classmates do you want to be friends with, but are not friends with yet?
— Which of your friends is your complete opposite?
— Which of the educators or teachers do you like the most? And who is not so good?
— If you were a teacher for one day, what would you teach your classmates?
— What annoyed you today?
— Has anyone acted unfairly that day?
— Was there anything that confused you?
— What did you disagree with today?
— If you could live today again, what would you do differently?
— What didn’t work out for you this week? And what happened?
P. S. Other questions arose in my family, and interesting answers immediately appeared. So, for example, my son and I sang the song “There was a birch in the field” in a duet, which he is studying to sing, and I realized that he had an excellent ear and voice, and together we thought, maybe try to enter a music school?
examples and ways of solving math problems for parents
Throughout their education, students have to solve problems – in elementary school in mathematics, and then in algebra, geometry, physics and chemistry. And although the conditions of problems in different sciences are different, the methods of solution are based on the same logical principles. Understanding how a simple math problem works will help your child develop algorithms for solving problems in other areas of science. Therefore, it is necessary to teach a child to solve problems from the first grade.
It is not uncommon for exact sciences to cause resistance in children. Seeing this, teachers and parents enroll such children in the “humanities”, because of which they only become stronger in the opinion that the exact sciences are not for them. Mathematics teacher Anna Eckerman is sure that problems with mathematics are often purely psychological:
Children are taught that mathematics is difficult. Long boring paragraphs in the textbook are difficult to approach. The teacher puts on the child the stigma of “triple” or “losers”. If you do not inspire children that they are stupid and they will not succeed, they will succeed in exactly everything.
For a child to be interested in learning mathematics, he must understand how this knowledge will be useful to him, even if he is not going to become a programmer or engineer.
Mathematics helps us count money every day, without the ability to calculate the perimeter and area it is impossible to make repairs, and the skill of drawing up proportions is indispensable in cooking – use it. Turn daily household questions into mathematical tasks for your child: let the benefits of mathematics become obvious to him.
Of course, it is not so easy to find a use for irrational numbers or quadratic equations in everyday life. And if the benefits of this knowledge raise questions in a teenager, explain to him that with their help we train memory, develop logical thinking and sharpness of mind – skills that are equally necessary for both “techies” and “humanities”.
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How to teach your child to solve problems
If your child is just starting to master the skill of solving problems, teach him to stick to a certain algorithm.
1. Read the conditions carefully
Better out loud and several times. After the child has read the problem, ask him questions about the text and make sure that he understands that you need to calculate the number of mushrooms, not cucumbers. Try not to be nervous if the child has missed something. Let him figure it out on his own. If the conditions mention realities unknown to the child, explain what it is about.
Particularly difficult are tasks with an indirect question, for example:
« One dinosaur ate 16 trees, which is 3 less than the second dinosaur ate. How many trees did the second dinosaur eat? “. Having inattentively read the conditions, the child will count 16−3, and will receive the wrong answer, because this task actually requires not subtraction, but addition.
2. Making a description of the problem
Presenting data in the form of a diagram, graph or drawing will help in solving some problems. The brighter the image is formed, the easier it will be to comprehend it. Visual recording will allow the child not only to quickly understand the conditions of the problem, but also help to see the connection between them. Often a solution plan already emerges at this stage.
The child must clearly understand the meaning of verbal formulas and know what mathematical operations correspond to them.
Forms of brief recording of problem conditions / shkola4nm.ru
3. Choosing a solution method
A clearly written condition should push the child to find a solution. If this does not happen, try asking leading questions, illustrate the problem with the help of surrounding objects, or play a scene. If one explanation doesn’t work, come up with another. Repeating the same question over and over is not effective.
All, even the most complex, mathematical problems are reduced to the principle “from two knowns we get an unknown”. But finding this pair of numbers often requires several steps, that is, decomposing the problem into several simpler ones.
The child must know how to obtain unknown data from two known ones:0132
It should reflect the entire sequence of actions – so the child will be able to remember the principle and use it in the future.
4. Wording of the answer
The answer must be complete and accurate. This is not just a formality: considering the answer, the child gets used to taking the results of his work seriously. And most importantly, the logic of the solution should be clear from the description.
Foxford Online Home School Algebra Basic Course 7th Grade
One of the most common mistakes is not providing the data that was originally asked for in the answer. If such a problem occurs, you need to return to the first paragraph.
5. Consolidation of the result
Do not think that after completing the task once, the child will immediately learn to solve problems. The result obtained must be recorded. To do this, think about the solved problem a little more: invite the child to look for another way to solve it or ask how the answer will change if one or another parameter in the condition changes.
It is important that the child has a clear algorithm of reasoning and actions in each of the options.
In our online school, in addition to lessons, students can consolidate their knowledge at consultations in the format of open hours, where teachers analyze topics that caused difficulties, show unusual tasks and various ways to solve them.
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