Welcome to the first post in our new series: Colorful Pages at Home! With this new series, we are hoping to help out families during the COVID-19 school closures by providing articles featuring a diverse book list and discussion questions to target specific reading skills. If you still have questions about Colorful Pages at Home, please check out my detailed explanation here. 

In this first post, we are going to give support in how to develop the reading skill of Wondering in your students at home. This skill is usually taught to students in Kindergarten to Grade 3, but can be a review and fun activity for your older kids as well. 

Diving Into The Skill: Wondering

Reading Skill	Definition	Examples	Common Core State Standards
Wondering	Asking a question you do not have the answer to	I wonder if Grace will win the race? I wonder why he feels sad?	RL.K.1; RL.1.1; RL.2.1; RL.3.1

Diverse Books to Practice Wondering

You can practice wondering with almost any book, but here are some diverse books that lend themselves to Wondering: 

• Last Stop on Market Street, by Matt de la Peña
• Jabari Jumps, by Gaia Cornwall 
• Each Kindness, by Jacqueline Woodson
• Niño Wrestles the World, by Yuyi Morales
• When We Were Alone, by David A. Robertson
  • This one is especially great because the whole book revolves around a young girl’s wonderings about grandmother.

Discussion Questions to Practice Wondering

Before you read the book, you can ask: 

• What are you wondering about the book BEFORE we read this book?
• What are you wondering based on the cover of this book? 
• What are you wondering based on the title of this book? 
• What are you wondering based on the summary we just read of the book?

While you and your child read the book, ask them: 

• What do you wonder about the book? 
• What do you wonder so far about the book?
• What do you wonder about [character’s name]? 
• What wonderings do you have? 
• What do you wonder about the part we just read? 
• Why do you have that wonder? **this is to access deeper thinking around wondering

After the book, ask your child: 

• What do you still wonder about the book? 
• Were any of our wonderings answered? Which ones? What were the answers? 

Challenge Your Kiddos!

Challenge your kids at home by asking them to write down and track their wonderings as they read or you read. I always have students use the sentence stem: I wonder ___? 

You can also challenge them to keep on the wondering throughout the day. Have them track the wonderings they have about the books they read on their own AND about what is happening in their life/day (ex. I wonder what daddy is going to cook for dinner? I wonder if Sophie will let me play with their legos? I wonder how the city of Seattle is going to respond to the COVID-19?). This will help them see the purpose behind this reading skill and integrate reading throughout the day!

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We hope this helps! If you try out this Colorful Pages at Home program, please take pictures and tag us on social media with @ColorfulPagesOrg (Instagram) or @ColorfulPages (Twitter) or use the hashtag #ColorfulPagesAtHome. Stay safe and stay healthy ❤️