“One of LA Youth’s suggestions for summer fun in this issue is riding the new Metro subway from downtown Los Angeles into Hollywood on page 25. There may be students, however, who feel that public transportation is not their idea of fun. To explore those issues, this exercise will practice interview and writing skills.
Activity
Every student gets to school in a unique way, whether by school or public bus, with their parents, or on their own. Your students are now reporters for a local newspaper investigating what transportation best suits teens because the school board is about to vote for other methods of transportation besides school buses. Each reporter must take notes of the conversation so they can go back and write their story. Also, en-courage your students to take descriptive information of their interviewee that can be used in their story, such as age or race.
Have your students interview three of their classmates and ask them the following questions:
• How do you get to school? What do you like most about that method? What do you like least?
• If you could get to school by any other method, what would it be? Allow your subject to be creative, such as suggesting a helicopter or other unconventional vehicle.
Once all information has been gathered, have your students put it together in a five paragraph story. The first or last paragraph should make a recommendation to the school board on what kind of transportation they should approve for the new school year.
Discussion Questions
After the class has written their stories, have a discussion on the process of gathering the information and on the findings.
• What did you find was the most difficult part of interviewing somebody (was it the note-taking, asking follow-up questions, etc.)?
• Now that you’ve written the story, if you could interview your classmates again, what would you ask them?
• Were you surprised by what your classmates said? Why or why not?
Quick Write!
What was your worst public transportation experience? Public transit has its benefits, but sometimes they are outweighed by a bad situation. Have your students complete the following statement for 5 minutes:
The worst thing to happen to me while I took public transportation was . . .”