Student Interviews

Excelling student:

I interviewed a female second grader from my class. She is known to be a very good student. She told me that she enjoys school. She believes herself to be a good student and she tries to get her work done on time. When outside of school, she loves to play hide-n-seek, tag, and she plays with her brothers. She states that she is friends with Amelia and Jocelyn and they love to play together especially at birthday parties. Her good memory of school is when she recieved a "caught being good" card, and she does not recall any bad memories. Her favorite teacher was her Kindergarten teacher because she smells good, and she is very nice. Her ideal teacher is one that gives her extra play time, listens to her, and is supportive. The one thing she wished her teacher knew is that she loves school and would love to do more fun math activities.

My observations of this students supports my beliefs of her being a high performance student. She is always first to raise her hand, and rarely gets in trouble. She is always one of the first to turn in her work and usually gets all the answers correct. She is a very sweet girl with a big heart. I have also observed her interacting with students on the playground. At one point when we were leaving one of her "friends" hit her arm instead of giving her a hug goodbye. She became very upset and started to cry. I took her aside and spoke with her and she said she was upset because she gives everyone else hugs but her. After getting her to calm down, she was perfectly fine and content. I have also heard that she is adopted and that her brother is in the gifted program. I believe that she is feeling the pressure at home, as she has thrown some of the papers that she did not get a perfect score on in the trash can. When asked about it she stated that she didn't want to take it home. My theory is that she is feeling the pressure of her brother and is trying to be perfect, but sometimes doesn't meet those expectations.

Struggling student:

I interviewed a male second grader from my class. He is known to be a student who is slower with doing his work, and fails to complete homework/school work on time. When asked if he enjoys school he did say yes. He thinks of himself as a good student. When outside of school he likes to play on the swings, video games, and plays football. His classmates describe him as a good friend. He is friends with a student named Andrew and they like to talk and hang out on the playground. His favorite memory is his first day of second grade because they played many fun games and he met new people. He does not recall and bad memories. He says a good teacher is one who gets them up and moving more, is nice, listens to him, and does fun stuff all the time. He wishes his teacher knew his favorite video game is Little Big Planet.