Interview 2

Here is my transcribed interview…

Interview 2 (Group)

3/1/13

Start Time- 12:50              End Time- 12:56                Interview Completion- 5 minutes 49 seconds

T- my responses

 

I.           Do the reading response journals help you understand the stories that we read during small group reading time?

Blue- mmmmmmmm…. What was the question again?

T- Repeat

Blue- Yeah, because you are asking us questions and sometimes they may be hard questions and then when you answer them, you will understand better

Yellow- uhhhhhh because they (long pause)

T- Do you think they help you?

Yellow- uh huh

T- okay, how?

Yellow- ummmmm

Blue- because why

T- Green, what are your thoughts?

Green-I say yes because when you retell the story if you re read it then it will… because you always tell us if we re read the story, it will help us understand

 

II.         What do you like about reading response journals?

Yellow (laughing)- you get to write about a story and that’s all

Green- I like it because I get to do it with you.

T- What else?

(long pause)

Blue- because I like writing for a really long time and my hand doesn’t get tired

Green- I like writing too

 

III.       What do you not like about reading response journals?

Blue- mmmmmmm that’s a hard one

T- what could I do to make them better?

Blue- that’s a good one, I don’t know

T- pretend I am going to do them again next year, what should I change to make them better for the students? Or what would make you like them better?

Blue- If there was packet that you had for all year long, then you could just do that and the questions would already be there

Green- If we had time that we could write in them so we weren’t missing anything

Yellow- laughing

T- do you have anything to add Yellow?

Yellow- no

 

IV.       Should the rest of the class use reading response journals?  Why or why not?

Green- I don’t think so.  Then it would get too crowded.

T- What would get too crowded?

Green- Like if we all had to write at different times and we would all have to write something short

Blue- I don’t think so because then if we were all missing something the Chinese teacher would get a little worried

Yellow- no because if we all had to do it at reading and we all had to go to Chinese

T- Okay, what if we didn’t do it at Chinese or other specials times, should the rest of the class have to do it?  If it was part of the normal schedule

(Everyone shaking head no)

Green- because we would all have to do it at separate times

Blue- it would be too much for you to write back

 

Throughout the interview I noticed several things:

Yellow was quiet and I had to pull any answers out of the students.  Based on the findings it seems as though he does not enjoy the RRJs and is not excited about writing in them.  If I look at it from my perspective of knowing the student, I am aware that Yellow is very shy and does not talk a lot or show emotion in the school setting.  Therefore, it is going to be difficult to gauge where Yellow’s thought process is.  I think in this case, to get any substantial feedback at all, a one on one interview will be necessary so he does not have the opportunity to shy away and let the other two participants answer the questions.

One day a week when I do field observations I use the first bit of specials time so the students can write in silence… This has caused the students to relate RRJs to “getting out of Chinese”.  I tried to clear up the confusion during the interview, but I am not sure they completely understood.

Students all enjoy reading response journals, but still had difficulty explaining why they were beneficial and why they liked them.

Students did not like/ think the RRJs were good to use in the future because they had to sometimes miss activities the other students were participating in (though this interruption is kept to a minimum, it is near impossible to fix this problem because there is no down time in the school day).