Visiting places in your
community is fun and educational for your child. Besides learning about
new places, field trips are also an excellent way to promote language
development. Your child will learn new words while on the field trip and
will want to talk about their experience afterwards. Bring your camera
along so you can take pictures of what you see. You and your child will
enjoy looking at the pictures and talking about what you learned.
Asking Open-Ended Questions
A question like "Where are we
going today?" evokes a one-word response. But an open-ended
question, "What do you think we'll see at the park?"
encourages a child to think about the park and come up with his own
ideas about what he might see. There is no right or wrong answer here.
An answer to an open-ended question
gives us a window into what a child is thinking and feeling. And the
response is sometimes wonderfully creative. When explaining or
describing, children also use language more fully.
It is difficult to change the closed-end
question habit. But when we ask open-ended questions, children benefit
by thinking through their responses and expressing their unique
thoughts. Their answers help us find out more about what they think and
feel.
Questions to ask before the field
trip:
- How will we get there?
- Why would we go there?
- Who will be there?
- Who works there?
- What are their jobs?
- What might we learn?
- What things do you already know about
the place we are visiting?
Questions to ask after the field trip:
- What interesting things did we see?
- What did you learn that you didn't
know before?
- Did anything surprise you?
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