Concepts: Conducting Interviews, Project Planning for Interviews
Continuing on last week’s lesson, we decided that the best way to become comfortable conducting and giving an interview is to practice! Since last week focused on creating questions beforehand and conducting an interview with scripted questions, I put the students on the spot and had them conduct completely improvised interviews.
Wednesday morning we discussed different questions that would be good to ask during an interview, and how the interviewer needs to write questions that are appropriate for the interviewee. For example, we came up with questions that would be good to ask a fellow student and then examined how questions for a teacher or parent interview would differ. As practice, I had the students draft five questions to ask each other in mock interviews, and then they took turns conducting interviews. This was excellent practice for being on both ends of the interview.
In the afternoon session, M’s interview skills had already greatly progressed and she was confident enough to interview Mrs. Jackson, her music teacher. Prior to the interview we discussed the pros and cons of pre-written questions versus improvised content, and that many radio interviews are conducted with a mixture of both approaches. She then drafted a series of appropriate ‘guide questions’ for a teacher interview, and was able to conduct the interview with Mrs. Jackson, who was able to provide excellent pointers for questions for future interviews.
M First Interview
[audio:WLOY_RadioEdu_Miracle_INT_Jackson.mp3]
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