Students interview other students, choose significant life events, rate them, graph them, and write about one or more, in this activity that integrates mathematical graphing with writing.

A checklist in student language to be used by elementary students as a self-assessment to prepare for successful interviews.

By conducting interviews, sharing and assessing data, and writing papers based on their authentic research, students reach their own conclusions on the meaning of the American Dream.

This public speaking lesson focuses on presenting and conveying important information, details, facts, and opinions in a concise manner. This lesson presents several different real-world situations where students are asked to share their perspectives, experiences, and stories where they are to give supporting details and facts that are important to the context of different social interactions (talking with peers, colleagues, community, interviews, etc). With the creation of this lesson, different level options of technology integration are offered to allow for flexibility and modifications for this lesson to best serve various classrooms and their students (low tech, medium tech, and high tech options). This lesson will help students analyze a social interaction and/or topic and have them clearly and concisely give an authentic response.

This public speaking lesson focuses on presenting and conveying important information, details, facts, and opinions in a concise manner. This lesson presents several different real-world situations where students are asked to share their perspectives, experiences, and stories where they are to give supporting details and facts that are important to the context of different social interactions (talking with peers, colleagues, community, interviews, etc). With the creation of this lesson, different level options of technology integration are offered to allow for flexibility and modifications for this lesson to best serve various classrooms and their students (low tech, medium tech, and high tech options). This lesson will help students analyze a social interaction and/or topic and have them clearly and concisely give an authentic response.

I use this (fictional) transcript of an initial client interview to get students thinking and talking about the component parts of an initial client interview and how an initial client interview might best be structured. I ask students to read the transcript before class and make an outline of what the interviewer is doing at different points in the interview. In class, I recruit students to read multiple parts of the transcript out loud, with breaks in the action to discuss what the interviewer is doing and how it might be done differently. The interview focuses on disability-based housing discrimination but no prior knowledge of disability or Disability Rights Law is needed for students to understand what's going on.

Students will develop their summarizing skills while learning about local history. They will learn to consider audience while selecting topics, conducting research and interviews, and writing historical markers for their town.

A checklist used by elementary students to reflect on conducting an interview for research purposes.

I use this exercise to introduce myself to students and to get them thinking and writing about basic interviewing skills such as asking open and closed questions and using active and passive listening techniques. Students read (fictional) transcripts of two interviews. I ask them to explain in writing which interviewer did a better job and to provide at least three examples of what the interviewers did or didn’t do that made one interview better than the other, with citations to relevant line numbers from the transcripts.