Grace Ku

Teaching & Learning 332

March 23, 2018
Student Reader Interview
Interview Questions & Responses:
Student A Response:
Student B Response:
 Student A Response:

F B
C C
B B
A A
C D
C C
D C
D A
A
D
B
F
D B
B A
A
A A
D
D
A A
D B
A
C C
FF B
C
D
D

Bullying, drama, school life

Student B Response
1. When do you read?
Student A: Every time I go to school. I also read at home too. Especially when teacher
commands for us to read, I read.
Student B: Around seven, the moment school starts. Basically any time I’m free, I read
about 12 hours a day.

2. I think spending my time reading is: really boring, boring, okay, great
Student A: Great, especially comic books!
Student B: Great.

3. The best way for me to read is to: read silently, read aloud to myself quietly, read aloud
with another person, or listen to others read to me
Student A: Read silently to myself, but sometimes read aloud with another person.
Student B: Read silently to myself

4. What type of books do you enjoy reading?

Student A: Comic books, I like reading books about real life. For example, like
nonfiction.
Student B: Thriller, definitely not romance. I also like to read fantasy and historical
fiction.

5. What topics do you like to read about?

Student A: Interesting ones. Something I can actually relate to, like books that talk about
school life.
Student B: Unusual topics like reincarnation, and questioning something in our lives.

6. What was the last book you had read recently?

Student A: Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel
Student B: Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

7. What is your favorite book?

Student A: Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
Student B: Da Vinci’s Code by Dan Brown

8. What’s the easiest thing about reading?

Student A: It’s that you can understand it, and get really into it. You think of it like a real
life.
Student B: Imagining scenarios in my head.

9. What’s hard about reading?

Student A: There’s like some words I don’t understand, sometimes I kind of don’t know
what is happening.
 Student B: Character development, sometimes at the end of the book they say characters
had changed. But at times, I just get confused of how the character has developed so
quickly.

10. Do you like to read? Why or why not?

Student A: I like to read, especially comic books, because they are easy to read. I don’t
like to read, when I can do something else fun.
Student B: Yes, it’s entertaining, I’m usually really bored.

11. Do the readings that you read for school interest you? Why or why not?
Student A: Yes, very much. The school lets me choose my books. There are actual comic
books, that seems appealing to me. Except for the required short passages that we read, I
think those are just a waste of time and time consuming.
Student B: Sometimes. For example, I read Night for school, and it felt too heavy for me.
I couldn’t breathe when I read this book, because the emotions were too raw.

12. How can teachers help encourage you to read?

Student A: Probably read out loud more, properly help with words that we don’t
understand. Introduce new books for us as well.
Student B: Book advertisement, maybe try to get the class get excited for it, instead of
dropping the books to us. Don’t give too much worksheets with the books. It would be
nice if we have choices, like let students to choose what books to read.

13. How do you choose a book to read?

Student A: When a book isn’t a comic book, its usually introduced to me by other people
like my sisters. I look at the cover and the author of the book. I also check what the story
is about and check whether or not the book is a comic book.
Student B: I go online and search up different genre, based on the genre I’m feeling for
that day. I usually search the keywords I’m interested with, and look at the lists of books
in front of me. When I’m at the bookstore, I pick up a book and open to the middle, and
see if it interests me.

Reflection:
For my Student Reader Interview assignment, I wanted to interview two students in the
same grade classroom. I can definitely see how effective and how much I would have understand
more if the two students I interviewed were actually in the same grade level. Unfortunately, both
of my practicums were lower grade classrooms so I wasn’t able to interview any of the students
from my previous or current classroom I am in. I also wasn’t able to arrange a time to interview
certain students from a different classroom. Instead, I was fortunate to able to interview students
who were currently in grade 4-8 during break. I go to the west side frequently and visit my
friend’s house, and I was able to interview her young siblings. As I had frequently gone over to
their house and saw them multiple times, I was able to easily see the difference between their
reading habits and interests. Student A is currently a fourth grader, while Student B is in eighth
grade. Based on my previous observations and interview session, I had understood Student A as
a struggling reader, and Student B as a strong reader. For my interview, I decided to create an
interview to help me understand how students are passionate in reading, and what students are
interested in reading.
As I was observing Student A, I noticed that Student A was a strong writer. She always
loved writing, where she would like to share her own work to me when I came to visit. However,
I wasn’t able to see Student A reading often during her free time. Even when at times she wanted
to show me the books she had read, all the books she had read were mainly graphic novels. Once
Student A was done with one of the books, she tends to tell me that she was too tired to read the
next book for a long time. It seemed that the Student A was interested in comic books only, she
tends to go for the books that were easy to read and visually appealing to the eye. However,
when I interviewed Student A, I was actually surprised with certain answers she had said during
the interview. Student A was definitely passionate in her reading, despite I thought she was a
struggling reader. It seemed like the student was still introduced in reading chapter books,
however, she just needed more recommendations or encouragements from other people to read.
One of the answers from Student A that stood out to me the most, was when I asked her how her
teacher can encourage her to read more books. I’ve seen how if another person talks about the
book as he or she gives to book to Student A, she is interested in reading it and even finishes it.
As you can see from her answers, Student B is a very strong reader. Even though she is a
lot older than Student A, Student B’s choice of books and interest is far beyond her other
classmate’s levels. It always amazed me how Student B was either reading a physical book or
reading on her phone when I saw her at home. At times, she would like to approach me and
express what she thought as she read through the book. Especially it shocked me that there are
actually young readers like her, who is really interested in reading classical novels like
Shakespeare. She told me that she actually likes to read these kind of books for her own
entertainment. It always surprised me how there are actually certain individual students like her,
are interested in classical or higher grade level reading books.
The similarities I had discovered from interviewing my two students was that they both
prefer reading silently to themselves, rather than reading it out loud with another person or
quietly by themselves. I also noticed that when I was asking about what they were interested in;
they were able to elaborate deeply on why they liked certain themes or books they read in the
past. It also helped me remember that students do actually remember the exact book or the author
that they really liked. It was amazing how the Student A automatically knew what was her
favorite book and author, and was expressing in detail on the other works her favorite author had
written that she read. The difference I noticed was the way how they found recommendations or
books that they’d like to read in the future. Since Student A was a young reader, she told me that
she becomes interested and usually find books when a person she’s close to recommends a book
to her. While, Student B tend to individually find her own interest, as she said she automatically
knew exactly what type of books she was interested in at the time.
The interview did not only help me structure and visualize the different interest and
reading style a student may have in their grade level, but also help me how to motivate young
readers to read as a teacher. Out of the questions I had chosen for the interview, the one that gave
me the most inspiration and idea was the one when I asked how their teachers can encourage
them to read more books. Despite that the two methods were quite different from one another,
both Student A and B wanted the teacher to introduce the books in some way into the classroom.
For instance, Student A liked if her teacher did more read-aloud and introduce more variety of
choices, and Student B would have liked if the teacher did more advertisements of the books. In
short, rather than simply assigning books with multiple worksheets, both of the students wanted
the teachers to help spark interest toward the book they are going to read. While listening to the
students on this question, it made me think and look back to how I was when I got assigned to
read for my classroom. Like the students in my interview, I noticed that I didn’t quite like all the
books that were assigned for me to read for the class. I also noticed that if the teacher was very
passionate with the themes or topics from the book, and began to discuss it into the classroom, I
was more aware and focused to finish reading the book. For example, I still remember
Frankenstein up to this day, because of the way how she taught and expressed it to our class. I
thought that I would never be interested in classical novels, until this experience with such a
passionate English teacher. It made me think that instead of assigning student’s worksheets that
they need to individually complete after reading the books, we should take more time to provoke
their interest and help show the connection between what they are reading for class.
It made me notice throughout my whole practicum and volunteer experience up to this
day, that lot of students struggled on completing their worksheets that came along with their
reading. However, it it used so much in the classroom, because it is the way how many of the
classrooms believed it was effective to show that the students had learned, based on the
curriculum and standards that were placed into the classroom. I always personally struggled with
this area, because I was able to directly see how lot of students were disinterested with the
worksheets and passages that were assigned to them. Instead of constantly assigning workload of
worksheet for the students, I will think of alternative projects or activities that students can do to
expand their knowledge and understanding toward their readings. It will be a struggle, but I will
always have this placed in my mind as I try to plan my future lesson for my students.
I really liked that we were assigned to interview students on their reading for this course,
because I learned so much from this experience. I was able to see that the information I learned
from my course was actually effective for students to learn and be engaged in the readings in the
classroom. It helped me understand more that each of the students in the classroom are
individually different, so it should be important for us to give a variety of readings for students to
choose at certain points in our curriculum. So then, students who are interested in classical
novels or graphic novels, will understand the similarities of concepts in two distinctive readings.
Students are interested in reading, but that interest can drift away from them after a certain bad
experience with reading from school. In addition to that, it helped me be certain to create a
questionnaire for all my students in my future classroom to help me keep my students engaged
and interested in the books that they read both at home and in school. If the classroom
environment is structured to be more in an engaged and positive way, the students will be
interested with the books that are being read in the classroom.