Using student interviews for assessment

Student interviews are discussions with students about their understanding of scientific concepts and phenomena. You can do these with individual students or small groups, while the rest of the class is doing independent work. You can also do interviews if you have a team-teaching arrangement.

Conducting student interviews

Decide ahead of time what you really want to know about your students' knowledge and skills. Draft a short list of questions to get at these concepts and collect any manipulatives or visuals that might be useful. For example, if you are teaching about weather, you might want students to identify weather instruments and show how they are used to take measurements. Find a place that is somewhat out of the way in the classroom for the interviews, so as not to distract the other students or give them clues to what the interview questions are. Make brief notes as students answer the interview questions, and add to these later on as you reflect on what the students said or did.