Your interview guide has your first questions. The best questions at LDPS will be the ones you did not plan: the follow-ups.
What your clients might say
Read these answers aloud, one at a time, as if a child in your group had just said them. If someone at home is helping, let them read the answers to you.
- “I like horses.”
- “I don’t know.”
- “School is boring.”
- “My sister is better at math than me.”
- “Can you make it like Minecraft?”
- (silence, looking at the floor)
- (another child answers for them)
How to run it
- For each answer, say two follow-up questions out loud: short, friendly, and about something real.
- Drop any follow-up that would not work, and say why.
- Write your best follow-up for each answer at the bottom of your interview guide, and say it once more in the voice you will use at LDPS.
Things to notice before you go:
- “I don’t know” usually means the question was too big. Make it smaller: “What did you do at recess today?”
- A child who compares themselves to a sibling has told you something personal. Be kind, do not write it down, and steer back: “What part of math feels hardest?”
- “Like Minecraft” is a want. Ask what they love about it: building? exploring? playing with friends? That is the need.
- When one child answers for another, thank them, then turn back: “And what do you think?” A child who still wants to pass can pass.