Using models creatively: An Interview

 

I have always been fascinated by the “magic” of science and I never miss an opportunity to apply it to materials I create for my classes.

This time it is a very basic interview, which I have called An Interview Like No Other, and which may be reproduced in a myriad ways as the student’s fancy takes them. (and believe me it takes them all over the place!)

The idea is that the students are called upon to work out a puzzle: who is the interviewee. By the by you can teach the difference between interviewer and interviewee and mention other similarly formed pairs (trainer/trainee, employer/employee and so on.

Back to the interview: the interviewee is a cloud and I have based the answers on popular science to the extent I could. The children loved the mental stimulation, but to my surprise not everybody could come up with the right answer, which pleased me … enormously!

What was, however, the greatest pleasure of all was some of the interviews A2 Level students wrote using the mould of my interview, which goes to show that children have not lost their ability to spin stories and to exploit creatively whatever is given to them.

You can use the interview at any level and simply recalibrate the language or your demands in terms of language, which evidently should be consistent with the level of English your students have.

Here is my interview:

 

Where do you live?

In space

 

Who are your parents?

Water and Air

 

What do you look like?

I come in all kinds of shapes

 

What do you do?

I float

 

What is your hobby?

Hanging over mountains

 

What is your enemy?

Weight

 

What happens when you put on too much weight?

I fall

 

 

And what follows is one of the most resourceful interviews by an eleven-year-old child (level A2):

Who are your parents?

Water, rocks  and ice

 

What do you look like?

I am red and white

Have you got any special features?

Yes, my sky and the sun become blue in the sunset

 

Have you got any life on you?

No, but there are some rovers on me

 

Have you got any neighbours?

Yes,  my two moons, Phobos and Deimos

 

 

And another one by a student of the same age and level:

Where do you live?

In a school bag

 

What do you look like?

 Square and usually colourful

 

What do you have inside?

Sheets of paper 

 

What colour have your sheets of paper got?

Sometimes colourful and other times black and white