Chapter 3: Interviewing Teams
Introduction
The previous chapter covered the record a team keeps of its season. This chapter covers the conversation you have with the students who kept it — the other main component of a judge's day.
A Team Interview is a short conversation between two judges and a team, held at the team's pit or another public space at the event. It is where students describe their season in their own words — what they built, what went wrong, what they changed, and how they worked through it together. A notebook shows you what a team did. The interview is where you ask how and why.
An interview is a conversation, not a presentation. What students tell you about their work is what you are listening for, and this chapter covers both halves of that job: how interviews are scored, and how to hold the conversation with students that gives you something to score.
The time to complete this chapter is approximately 45 minutes.
In This Chapter
This chapter covers how Team Interviews are conducted and how they are scored. You will learn who takes part in an interview, where interviews happen, and how to use a team's Season Summary to prepare for one. You will then learn how the Team Interview Rubric is organized and how to choose a score based on what you heard. Finally, you will learn how to lead the conversation itself — using the rubric's sample questions, asking follow-up questions that open a topic up rather than closing it down, and helping students feel comfortable enough to tell you what they know.
This chapter completes the content shared by every judge. After you finish it, you will take the Judge Certification Exam.