interviewing

Tremendous Tahi - what has been happening.....

For this inquiry, we have focussed in interviews as our main avenue to gather information. This in itself proved rather tricky. The children had formulated questions using the question map but had real difficulty converting these into questions that you could ask someone. It is a lot harder to word a question correctly to ask a person, instead of finding answers fromt he net or a book.

To make this more successful we had mock interviews using these questions. The children tested the quality of their questions as they asked peers. This proved to be a valuable activitity as it gave the children an instant gauge of the quality of the question. The interviewee was directed to only answer the question asked, not to contribute any prior knowledge or to read between the lines. This was very frustrating for some as they had to think harder about how the question was worded. Now the children are comparing the quality of the answer against the quality of the question, for some, quite challenging. It was great to see those children that made the connection quickly, tutoring others so their question and interview techniques also improved, some very powerful learning.

This has made the children realise that they can learn so much more by taking risks and supporting their peers through those risks. Really meaningful learning, in more ways than one.