Writing is hard work and a lot of fun (witheyes)

The interview project in reading class is well underway. A lot of the blogs are looking good. Here are the requirements for the interviews:

• Interviewee cannot be a family member
• Interviewee cannot be a Challenger staff member
• Interviewee must be an adult
• Interview questions must be open-ended (no yes or no answers)
• Interviews may be conducted by phone, email or in person
• Parent or guardian must accompany you to the interview if it is done in person
• Interview will be published at your blog
• 400-800 words in length
• May be written in “question and answer” format or in “paragraph with embedded quotes” style
• You must ask at least five questions
• The questions must be approved by me before the interview

I figured it would be a good idea to write some example interviews myself so you could see the ways in can be done.

For an example of an interview written up in question and answer format see Jeff Brady, NPR Reporter.

For some examples of the embedded quote format see:

Writer and Teacher, James Van Pelt

Dwight D. Jones Leads Colorado Education

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Still Working Hard

Fantasy Writer, T. A. Barron

Some possible candidates for interviews are:

• Police officer
• government official
• business owner
• veteran
• doctor
• lawyer
• veterinarian
• athlete
• pastor
• actor
• musician
• bus driver
• the queen of England
• mail carrier

Good luck. I look forward to reading your work!

(Caren Litherland)

I think it will be beneficial if I set out some guidelines for the students to keep in mind as they write and post to their blogs. I am open to suggestions or clarifications. Here they are.

• No insults or attacks on other people
• Must use proper grammar and punctuation
• No making fun of anyone
• No threats
• Do not pretend to be insane
• No joking about hurting people
• No foul language
• No posting of copyright material (text, pictures, video, etc.) without permission from the copyright owner
• If you use pictures or other objects that are in the public domain or are used under a Creative Commons (CC) license, you must give credit to the owner of the material, and provide a link back to the original (like I did when using the CC-licensed photo from Flickr in this post)

You can post as often as you want. Some good topics for blog posts include:

• A subject you know a lot about
• Hobbies
• World events
• Sports
• Local news
• What’s going on in your neighborhood
• Pets
• Books you are reading
• Product reviews (only if you are very familiar with a particular product)
• TV shows
• Movies you have seen
• Games
• How-to do something

Those are just a few ideas.