This learning experience is a great one to do at home with your student as it takes very little prep time and requires almost no materials or resources to complete.
Materials You Need:
- Phone / iPad / Tablet or Computer
- Notebook
- Pencil
This is a great time to begin a discussion with your student about research. Research is a key component of non-fiction writing and representing. You need to know what you are talking about in order to create factual and truthful content. A great way to discuss research with your student is simply as having a question and finding the answer. Sometimes finding the answer can mean talking to someone else who has a lot of knowledge about the topic, sometimes research can mean experimenting and testing things out until the answer becomes clear, and sometimes that can mean going on the internet or reading a book to find information that other people have found and learning about the topic that way.
In this case your student is going to begin with the research question "Who is ________?". Allow your student to choose someone within your family or friend group who is available to sit down and be interviewed. This is where the technology piece comes into play. Obviously right now face to face interviews are not allowed with anyone who lives outside of our own homes. So should your student choose a friend or a relative who is not living in the same space as the child you, you can reach out over the computer with e-mail or Skype, you can call the individual on the phone or you can FaceTime them or video chat on a tablet.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before your student reaches out to the person they are going to interview they need to prepare. Have your student sit down and think of 5-10 questions they want to ask this person. Make sure all of the question your students comes up with are in line with the overall research question, "Who is _______?". You can do this by allowing your student to draft out any and all questions that come to their mind. Then during the revision process you can have your student read back through the questions and consider if the question will help them to figure out who their person of interest is.
Potential Questions Could Include:
- Likes and Dislikes (food, colours, seasons, etc)
- Their family life
- Their work
- Their hobbies /activities
- Their friends
Once your student has prepared 5-10 questions to use in their interview it is time to actually conduct the interview. If you have access to another device, you can record the interview on the device so your student can go back and listen to the answers again. I would also encourage your student to take some notes as the interviewer is speaking. Jot notes are fine as you have the recording to review if need be. If your child is having a difficult time multi-tasking between asking the questions, listening and writing the answers down then allow for more time in between questions so the child can simply write the answers after the question has been answered.
Once your student has the information they need from their interviewee it is time to move on to the final step. It is time for your child to decide how they want to present what they found out.
Possible Presentation Methods:
- Write a Paragraph
- Create a Poster
- Create a Commercial/Infomercial
- Create a Magazine / Magazine article
There is no right or wrong way for your student to show what they've learned. Allow them to choose a method (listed above or other) and support them in doing that to the absolute best of their ability. The goal is to have your student learn something and then demonstrate what they learned by any means they can.
What can I do to make sure learning is taking place?
This is a great question. Even in the classroom as a teacher we are not constantly assigning percentages and grades to students. We talk to our students have discussions with them and listen to their thinking. We also observe students as they work to see where they are at and if there is any support we can offer to help them in the task at hand. I strongly recommend just being a part of the process with them, to the best of your ability and with the time you have. Sit with your student and talk to them about what they are doing and why. Watch them while they work and offer support or other ways of seeing.
Most importantly have fun with your student, learning is all about exploring and experiencing things first hand.
