Affirmation Interview

When?

Before and after reading

Why?

How?

Steps

1. Select a central text and Identify a focus for the interview from the text.
2. Have students read the text, either individually, in pairs or as a whole class.
3. Introduce the class to writing effective text-dependent interview questions. Use these criteria to guide your introduction.
   Text-dependent questions:
   • Can only be answered with evidence from the text.
   • Can be literal but must also involve analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
   • Focus on word, sentence and paragraph detail as well as themes or events
   • Focus on difficult portions of text to enhance reading proficiency
   • Can be about content, meaning, connections or style.
4. Direct students to select five interview questions from the class-generated list.
5. Strategically pair students. Assign one student the role of the interviewer and another the role of interviewee.
6. Instruct students to interview each other about the central text. The interviewee's responses must include textual evidence. The interviewer records the interviewee's responses.
7. Students switch roles.
8. Put pairs together to form groups of four. Instruct students to share their interview responses with their new group mates.
9. Tell students that, during sharing, they are responsible for affirming each member of the group at least once. Provide examples of affirmations such as: “Thank you,” “I like how you re-stated that,” or, “That was a really thoughtful thing to say.”
10. Bring the large group back together. Ask students to share insights from the team experience with the whole class.

English language learners

Connection to anti-bias education

Affirmation Interview captures positive behaviors and encourages mutual support, respect, collaboration and community building. The strategy also empowers learners by turning over responsibility of communication to students.
 

Sample text-dependent interview questions:

• What do you most want to learn about the central text?
• What experiences have you had with…?
• When in your life would you find it useful to…?

• What did you learn from the text?
• What would you like to know more about?
• How will you use what you have learned?
• What did you find most interesting about the reading?
• What did you find most difficult?
• What did you find surprising?
   

Critical Literacy Text-Dependent Questions

Use these critical literacy question models to create text-dependent questions that examine the role of power and privilege in the central text. Craft questions so that students must defend and explain their response with reference to the texts being studied.