Today the kids were amazing! They really thought critically about the questions that they were going to ask on the street. Practicing the questions was a good way for them to see which ones fell flat and which ones evoked an interesting (or at least longer) response. I told Mr. Landow that I wished I had a camera running just to capture the conversations.

The other task we had today was to start to figure out who might be a good source for a formal interview. I shared the one lead I heard, but I was pleasantly surprised that they had so many interesting ideas for expert interviews–meteorologists (Chris’s uncle IS a meteorologist–all right!), Botanical Gardens, factory workers, drought specialists–in addition to teachers, scientists and professors–now I just hope we can get someone to let us interview them and that the kids are able to go to interview the person.

Their homework (which I still need to post) is to write a script or letter convincing the expert interview to let them interview him/her. Many of the students just had a general idea for contact and need to follow through with a name and contact information. I wonder if they should use their cell phones and all make calls simultaneously or if having the school phone on Caller ID would be better.One frustration is that some of the kids have not done anything yet–we’ve been working for almost two weeks now and some have absolutely no blogs. They have computers in class, so they should have something, even if they don’t have access at home.