These are some of the questions that students said they would like to ask one another using the present perfect. It is interesting that the hot items always cluster around the same themes. Questions about four topics are always winners, and they showed up here. These Top Tier Topics [...]
The Special Person questions are not regulated to lower level classes. They can be adapted to any level. And if you want to target a specific verb form with Special Person questions, you can. With practice you can make natural sounding questions and conversations that lean towards almost any [...]
When I started doing “Special Person” student interviews I had an interviewing model in mind. It was Oprah. Having that model in my head helped me to keep me on track in rambling interviews with kids that didn’t even know what they wanted to share. And Oprah was a [...]
Not every day in the CI classroom goes precisely according to plan, but in the big picture it can still be working. I asked a student to stay after class the other day to talk with him about his blurting out in class. We hadn't talked long when he [...]
As we dig deeper into personal interviews kids start to reveal more. Students that were reluctant to share are now opening up. We interviewed a sweet but quiet boy in a level one class last week. He was asked the routine questions, but toward the end of the period, [...]
Here is a question from Karen Olson about personal interviews. She is well on her way to combining the components of TCI, but is worried that the process is taking too long: “I feel good about having established my class expectations/procedures/participation grading, Free Voluntary Reading, Kindergarten day, music listening/cloze [...]