45 Powerful Guided Questions for Reading

Guided questions for reading prompt discussion between readers about what’s happening in a text selection. 

These questions encourage readers to actively engage with the text. 

Guided questions for reading also serve as a way to gauge how well a reader is understanding and connecting with the information presented within a book. 

Utilizing these types of questions supports readers as they journey toward improving their reading comprehension skills. 

So keep these guided reading questions handy because they’re going to be a very resourceful tool in quickly assessing the comprehension of readers.  

Guided Questions for Reading

Following you will find a variety of guided questions for reading comprehension.

1. What ten adjectives would you use to describe this character and why?

2. Does this text remind you of another book that you’ve read? 

3. How is the setting significant in this story? Explain. 

4. Can you tell me how you tackled a reading roadblock? What was your strategy for solving the problem?

5. What’s a deep text-to-self, text-to-text, or text-to-world connection that you have with this selection? 

6. Who is telling the story? How do you know?

7. What caption would you add to this illustration and why?

8. Based on the title of the next section, what do you infer it will be about?

9. What are the key traits that helped the main character overcome his/her challenges?

10. How would you have added a twist to this part of the story?

11. Do you notice any examples of figurative language? Can you point them out?

12. Can you show where in the book the author used descriptive language?

13. How does the book make you feel and why?

14. Can you summarize this section?

15. What are you using context clues while reading?

16. Does this story remind you of something happening in real life?

17. How would you explain to someone how to use context clues to define unfamiliar words?

18. What is the main idea of this chapter?

19. Have any of your inferences been correct? Why or why not?

20. Can you tell me three details from the selection that support the main idea?

21. What’s your opinion on the main character’s behavior?

22. Before reading, what did you want to know about this topic? 

23. Can you share a cause-and-effect scenario from the book?

24. How would the story be different in another setting?

25. What text features would support the main idea?

26. What messages is the author sending you?

27. What opinions does the author share?

28. How do you think this story will end and why?

29. What is the theme of this story? How do you know?

30. What do you think this character is going to do next and why?

31. What is the setting of the story?

32. Will you provide an example to show that this character is (insert character trait)?

33. Are there any facts that the author shares? Tell them.

34. In your opinion, what is the most important part of the text and why?

35. Which details in the book support the main idea?

36. At this point, what does the author want you to learn or know?

37. Which text features on the page help you?

38. How did you tackle pronouncing difficult words? 

39. Have you learned any new facts?

40. Which parts of this section are most important and least important? What clues did the author give to make you think that? 

41. Does this part remind you of anything that has happened in your own life?

42. What images stand out on this page? Why? 

43. After reading this section, what are the key ideas? 

44. As you are reading, what are some questions you have about the text? 

45. Now that you have finished this section or part, what have you learned? 

Final Thoughts: Guided Questions for Reading

You’re now all set to assess comprehension using these helpful guided questions for reading.

Related: Boost reading comprehension with QAR questions.