Writing Opportunity: Discussion Questions Part 1

As we’re preparing our manuscripts to submit to Kaeden Books, we’re now working on the very last page of the published book.

The final section on this last page is the Discussion Questions. There are 3 parts to these questions:

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

If you’re a teacher or write for teachers, you’re probably already familiar with these educational strategies. If not, it might be a little tricky to prepare these, but you can do it. It just might take a little longer to think through what you’re going to write.

I looked through all the google previews of all the nonfiction books listed at Kaeden Books and found only 2 that showed me the page with the discussion questions. These 2 books are:

Fiesta

Flowers

Go ahead and click on the google previews for these books and scroll all the way to the Discussion Questions on the last page of both.

An important fact to note is that both sets of discussion questions for both books are driven by the Common Core State Standards. This means that these questions are based on what the Common Core Standards require teachers to teach when they introduce nonfiction (informational texts) to their students.

So go ahead and look at the Common Core State Standards for teaching Informational Text to Kindergarten. Click on the link and take a minute to read over this strand of standards. It only takes a minute and every time we can read these standards, we’ll become more familiar and less apprehensive of them.

After you read these standards, let’s take a look again at the first set of Discussion Questions we find in FIESTA and FLOWERS.

BEFORE READING

If you notice, both books have similar questions that they present in this section.

Here are the questions I wrote for my own manuscript, just so you can compare mine as a third example for your frame of reference:

Before Reading:

• Take a picture walk. Point out the special features of the book: the Table of Contents, the Glossary, and the Index. Discuss what each is used for.

• Have the students turn to the Index. On which page can you find mammals?

Notice how I copied their formatting. I put the heading Before Reading in bold. I bulleted my two discussion questions. I italicized the word I told them to look up in the index. I used similar wording to the ones in Fiesta and Flowers but made them apply to my own manuscript instead.

So go ahead and write two or three questions to include in this section of your own manuscript.

Filed under: Beginning Readers, common core state standards, Nonfiction, Picture Books