I am back from a little break, ready to get my blog on. Today, I want to talk about my version of Student Interviews that I learned about from Bryce Headstrom. I don’t know if he is the originator but it is where I learned about it. Of course, I have to put my spin on it. That is always important. You have to make techniques work for you.
Almost everyday, I pick a student at random. I randomize student seating everyday (although this will be changing because of Covid this year). I use their seats to pick a student of the day. I will continue to do this, but this time they will have the same seat everyday. The student that I choose gets to be the star of the interview.
I ask the student to come sit in a big comfortable chair in front of the room. If a student doesn’t want to, I don’t force the issue, but I have never had a student refuse. I will probably just interview them from their seat this year because of the virus.
I have some questions prepared on the screen to ask the student. The questions are full of visual clues to aid comprehension. I am strategic about what I ask because I want this to aid in acquisition. Students tend to pay more attention during this activity because they are eager to hear what students will say and also because I follow it up with an additional activity.
Personal interviews are important because it allows you to work with the “you” form of the verb, it helps you connect with students because you are learning more about them, and it is fun.
I always ask them some small talk questions to start which are important (I do vary these up):
- What’s your name?
- How old are you?
- Do you have any brothers and sisters?
- etc.
Then, I ask about likes and dislikes. I like to work a lot of food vocabulary into this lesson because it doesn’t always come up otherwise and students generally enjoy talking about food. If my focus for the week on food is ice cream, for example, the first day I will ask, “Do you like ice cream?” The next day I will ask the same thing, but I will vary it up, maybe saying “Do you prefer vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream.” I always make a big deal about what they choose. Then, the third time, I will ask the student, “Do you like ice cream with cherries?” I always strive to build the language that way. My goal is for them to acquire ice cream, not so much the other stuff, but if I want them to, I will have to use it in the same kind of process.
I will also use different verbs in my questions, depending on what verbs I want them to acquire. Using the “you” form is so important because it is not used as much as the first or third person verbs and when we have conversations with people, then obviously we need to use it. For example, if I am looking for acquisition of the verb “believe” I will use it in the same manner as I did for ice cream. I will first ask if they believe in ghosts, later if they believe in aliens, and maybe if they believe in the tooth fairy. (A side note on the tooth fairy – it is a mouse in Spanish and French and the students enjoy that and will acquire the word for mouse easily because of using it as the tooth fairy. It brings in whimsy to the classroom and you can always hook students with whimsical vocabulary.)
I like to have about 10 questions total. You don’t want it to drag on. Sometimes, I will randomly ask students if they are not paying attention one of the questions as well to bring them back into the fold. At times, I have asked students to guess if what the answer will be.
As a follow up, I will ask questions to the class to review the student’s answers. If I want to extend it further, I will ask students to write 3 or 4 sentences in the target language about the student who was interviewed.
When you are creating questions, it is helpful to bring back previous vocabulary for more repetition and help in retention.
The last question I always ask the student is if he or she would like a piece of candy (or whatever prize I might have). That might be why no one has ever refused being the interviewee.
How would you make this work in your classroom? What ideas do you have to improve it?
I like this idea. I’m curious as to your class sizes and how long are your classes. I’m new to your website if this was information was previously provided. Next year, I got the idea from a colleague to create a digital storybook in which each student has a page with a short bio about them. At the end of the year, the teacher uses the storybook to assess her students.
My class sizes are generally 25-30. I used to teach high school, but now I teach 8th and 9th grade classes. The way we assess at our school is that we look only at listening, reading, and writing. We don’t assess speaking in the first year. We use a proficiency based exam for all parts. The listening and reading parts are based on the write and discuss activities we have done over the year. The writing is a times free write for 10 minutes where students must meet the proficiency target which is novice high for first year. I like your idea about the storybook. I would need to know more about what goes into the book for each student to further comment.