Reader Response Questions Help Students Focus and Reflect
Reader Response Prompts for Fiction
reader response questions
1. Explain a character's problem and then offer your character advice on how to solve his/her problem.
2. Explain how a character is acting and why you think the character is acting that way.
3. From what you've read so far, make predictions about what will happen next and explain what in the text makes you think it will happen.
4. Pick one character and explain why you would/would not like to have him/her as a friend.
5. Describe and explain why you would/would not like to have lived in the time or place of the story.
6. What real-life people or events are you reminded of by characters or events in the story? Explain why.
7. Write about what would happen if you brought one of your characters to school or home for a day.
8. Pick a scene in which you disagreed how a character handled a situation/person and rewrite it in the way you think it should have happened.
9. What quality of which character strikes you as a good characteristic to develop within yourself over the years? Why? How does the character demonstrate this quality?
10. Who tells the story? Is this the best person to tell it? Why?
11. How would the story be different if told through another character's eyes?
12. Why do you think the author wrote this story?
13. If you were the author, would you have ended the story in a different way? Why? How so?
14. How does the character's actions affect other people in the story?
15. How does the author provide information or details to make the story seem realistic?
16. How does the author help you feel that you are really there (in both realistic stories and fantasy)?
17. Do you have any unanswered questions about the story? Explain.
18. Copy an interesting/confusing/important/enjoyable passage and explain why you chose it.
19. From what you've read so far, make predictions about what will happen next and explain what in the text makes you think it will happen.
Reader Response Prompts for Nonfiction
reader response questions
20. Copy a short passage that you found to be interesting. Explain what made it interesting for you.
21. Write a summary of what you read in your book today.
22. Explain some of the things that you have learned so far that you are not likely to forget in the near future.
23. Write to inform us about the author. What other articles and/or books has the author written? Is he/she one of your favorite authors, and if so, why?
24. What ideas might you have for turning this work of nonfiction into a work of fiction? Give a brief summary of what your story might be like.
25. Explain the basic information that is being presented in terms of the 5W's: Who? What? When? Where? Why?
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