Student Interview

The last time I was at my practicum school I took advantage of a unit test to accomplish two lingering blog posts.  This post will deal with an interview of two young men (I had to look up at them and I'm 6'1"!!!).  They had finished their test early and were looking at their next long term project on the wall, a list of historical physicists, chemists, and a variety of female scientists not named Curie.  

One thing I learned, teenagers guard syllables more than a goblin guards gold at Gringot's Bank on Diagon Alley.  Monosyllabic speech is an art form at that age and these two guys were masters.  While I admit to not being the best interviewer (most of my experiments never talked back except for a couple of crickets and even then I had to coax them with a faux cricket recorded earlier).  

When I could bribe them to speak in complete sentences of yes or know I had found out the same thing:

What do they like best about this class and science learning?

Answer: they are given an explanation or some background.  They than do an activity generally by the next block.  They enjoy that the hands on activity does relate back to the topic and is not just some buy work project.

What has been their favorite activity/thing about the class?

First both expressed that this teacher is their favorite for this year.  Having read their student handbook, the first 2 years at this school are highly planned out in terms of requirements.  There is wiggle room for electives (foreign language, band, choir etc) but most students have to take 6 subjects out of 8 possible blocks with little to no choice over who teaches it.  Next their favorite activity was burning the food and calculating the "food calories" to the printed box calories.  Having done that myself, flaming Cheetos  cashews and marshmallows is a fun thing (of course one questions the wisdom of giving 14 year olds fire).  

What do they like least?

They can be overwhelmed by terms, formulas and procedures.  They have open note/open book tests.  The students feel that they have no means of organization and are left to fend for themselves in that regard.  They are struggling and just don't seem to know where to begin.