What Makes a Good Question? Biography Inquiry

Our work on biography began with an oral activity. Students were assigned a partner - someone from the class that they did not know well - and asked to interview them using the following questions:

Creating Interview Questions

Interviewer: _______________________________
Subject: __________________________________

Interview etiquette:

1. Pretend you are meeting this person for the first time.
   a) Introduce yourself and shake hands.
   
b) Thank them for taking the time to see you.
        (I really appreciate you taking time to see me)

c) If you are using a recording device you must let your subject know.
   Do you mind if I record this interview?

1. What is your full name?

2. Where were you born?

3. Who are your parents?

4. What’s your favourite colour?

5. Where do you go to school?

6. Where do you live?

7. What’s your favourite activity?

8. What’s your favourite season?

They set about interviewing their partners and recording notes.

Once everyone had finished we regrouped to reflect. I asked a few students to share various answers and then asked students what was wrong with the questions. None could come up with an answer so I selected a student to demonstrate the problem.

It went something like this:

Watch what happens when I change the first question from "What is your name?" to "How did you get your name?"

and question 2 to "What happened on the day you were born?"

Those questions prompted an outpouring from the class of stories. Everyone wanted to share their stories. They got it. The key to an interesting interview is creating questions that lead to story.

Students then had to work with their partners to reframe the questions so they would lead to story.

ex: Who are you parents? became How did your parents meet?

Where do you go to school? became What's the worst trouble you've ever gotten into at school?

Students were then given the task of selecting a teacher to interview and creating 10 questions that would lead to story. Included in this was a discussion on the ethics of interviewing, recording and sharing personal information.

Tasks included:

1. Develop the questions

2. Create a release form.

3. Book a time with the subject.

4. Interview, record, make notes immediately after the interview.

5. Self-assess - how did the interview go? What did you learn about interviewing?

6. Give feedback to the class on what was learned during the process

They visited this site to find examples of suitable questions.

Students are now writing 1 page articles about their subject or the interview itself.

This is preliminary work for our inquiry.