Eye Witness Reporting

Engineers must be able to effectively communicate complex problems to other people who are not engineers. This lesson and activity provides an opportunity for students to practice doing that.

Be able to summarize their engineering adventures and communicate them to others.

See the storyline under the Introduction/Motivation section of Lesson 7.

1. Provide students with a series of questions that the "interviewer" will ask them. Emphazie that responses must be be short and concise as is typical of evening news programs. The following questions were included in the previous activity's Student Guide Worksheet. 1) What did you enjoy most about your adventure in the Amazon? 2) What did you find to be the most challenging? 3) What skill(s) did you learn that will be helpful in the future? 4) What was the most memorable part of your adventure? In addition, students were asked to come up with two of their own questions/answers to share their Amazon rainforest adventure tales.
2. Either let the groups decide who will be the interviewee or choose for each team. Alternatively, have the teacher be the interviewer or pick one student to perform that role.
3. Once students have answered the questions and are ready to role play, designate an interview area, such as the front of the classroom, and invite the representatives (interviewees) from each group to come up. Set up chairs in a modified horseshoe to create a sitting area similar to a TV studio such that all the participants are facing the "audience."
4. To conduct the news show, the interviewer asks a question and each group representative responds with his/her prepared statement in turn.

Worksheet: Each student group completes and hands-in the activity worksheet from the previous activity, providing their group's answers to the four interviewer questions and providing their own additional two questions/answers. Review their worksheets to gauge their depth of engagement and comporehension.