Children’s Questions Lead to Lifelong Learning
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
Each book we read and discuss with children contains sparks that can ignite their imaginations, energizing a hunger for learning more.
Story books (fiction) provide children with insights into how characters relate to each other within imaginative plots, inviting family and class conversations, like “Did that ever happen to you?” and “I wonder why she did that. What would you have done?” Carefully timed and invited discussions about stories can help to sharpen and deepen children’s questioning about personal character, humanity, relationships, courage and self-determination in life.
On the other hand, informational books (nonfiction) create a mental playground for real-world inquiry and investigation. They are designed primarily to anticipate and answer questions that children might have about the subject at hand, or to provide a launch pad for readers to refine their unique, though perhaps off-base, questions when the answers are not necessarily readily available.
Reading factual books can initiate a child’s exploration of pretty much anything. For example, books about history, any of the sciences, math, the social issues and technology provide starting places where, in conversations with an adult and others, children can learn how to articulate their questions and share their confusions. Such wonderings and speculations among children or within a family can then open doors to the development of their independent reasoning abilities and enable them to delightedly embrace their personal unknowns.
These curiosities inspire questions that can spur children to put a book down and launch new inquiries. Embracing their inquisitiveness, older readers can develop their resourcefulness, exploring their wonderings about the mysteries that bubble up in their minds as they encounter new people, places, things, events and ideas while reading with younger children, being read-to, watching TV, engaged with any other source of information.
Reading a story together and having a conversation about its characters and events is a delight. Reading about something real can lead to explorations that might last hours, days, or perhaps even a lifetime. Consider that answers to nonfiction questions often generate more questions, which can lead readers to discover many learning resources, such as a teacher’s individual expertise, public and school library collections (and their librarians), community businesses, zoos, museums, airports–you get the idea. In the process, adults can show a child how to communicate with busy experts for a quick discussion on the topic in question. Most people are delighted to answer children’s questions about their life experiences, backgrounds and their current work.
Exploring the possibilities for obtaining answers to their own questions about the world helps children form a foundation for enriched lifelong learning. Within those conversations, children quicken their steps onto a path forward to access the ongoing developments of virtually any kid-stimulating frontier. THAT can lead to children discovering the exhilaration of self-directed inquiries–and naturally to enjoying even more terrific books and joining others in ever-deeper inquiries across a lifetime.