The one thing that seemed to have my students stumped was what they needed to ask their interviewees. Though having them post on the discussion board about a literacy event that they have experienced seemed to help them formulate somewhat of an idea, they were still floundering with the assignment.
The first exercise that we did in class was a freewrite. Each of them had to write about the person they were interviewing and give reasons for their choice. The aim of this assignment was to help them analyze their interviewee so that they could move towards a definite direction. Many of them seemed to have no concrete idea about what they needed to look for in an interviewee. So when they reported back to the class, I initiated a discussion of motive to help unearth the 'unique' angle that each interviewee might bring to the paper,one hopes that they did manage to gain some direction from this.
Once the class formulated an idea of who they were interviewing, it was imperative that they know how to interview. I spoke to them about open and close ended questions, using examples to illustrate. The next segment of class was spent doing group work, where each group had to come up with 5 open ended questions to ask a potential interviewee.
In the little time that was left for class we quickly discussed the questions put forth by each group. I also started a discussion thread where each one of them had to post 5-10 questions that they were going to ask their interviewee.
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