This inside look at Paula Rogovin's classroom lets you see the classroom interviews in action. You'll come to understand what a powerful vehicle interviews are for inquiry-based, multicultural learning and how you can make their content a regular part of classroom life.
You'll see children interviewing a building superintendent, an interior decorator, a cabinet maker, and a writer with multiple sclerosis. You'll observe interviews held outside of school, including one conducted at a local construction site. You'll also watch children taking notes, represented by pictures in the beginning of the year, and invented and conventional spelling as the year progresses. And you'll sit in on a teachers' planning session and observe how the content of the interview is extended into all parts of the curriculum—how concepts become the basis for lessons in reading, writing, literature, math, science, drama, and other areas. Rogovin walks you through the typical day, following the predictable schedule, to demonstrate how the content of interviews can become a regular part of classroom life—at any grade level.
Rogovin views social action as an outcome of inquiry studies. Whenever possible, her students use their knowledge to bring about change. The video culminates with a segment on child labor around the world. The children write and perform their own play, The Person Behind the Thing, as an expression of their own opposition to child labor, drawing on interviews, photographs, videos, news clippings, the Internet, and books. |
