Roving Reporter — Three Questions for a Grown-Up

Your child becomes a reporter who interviews a real person about something they do or know — a grandparent about their childhood, a neighbour about their dog, the postal worker about their round. The job is to come with questions, listen, and ask at least one more that was not planned.

  1. Choose the person and the topic together. Someone friendly and unhurried: a relative, a neighbour, a shopkeeper you know, or the other parent about their job.
  2. Collect questions beforehand. Ask “What do you want to find out?” and draw a small picture for each question on a card — aim for three. Offer the question-starter words what, how, why, when if the child gets stuck.
  3. Make a reporter kit. A clipboard or notebook, a pencil, and a “microphone” (a wooden spoon or cardboard tube).
  4. Do the interview. The child asks; you stay beside them but do not ask for them. After each answer, pause — give the child time to react.
  5. Hunt for a follow-up question. Whisper “Did that make you wonder about anything else?” One unplanned question that grows out of an answer is the real prize.
  6. Report back. Later, the child tells someone else the most surprising thing they learned, or draws it.

Variation: Phone or video-call edition for far-away relatives. Reverse interview — the grown-up interviews the child about something the child is the expert on. Object interview — the person brings one object (a tool from work, an old photo) and all the questions are about it.

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere two people can sit and talk — kitchen table, doorstep, park bench, a video call
  • Surface: None needed; a clipboard or book to lean on helps
  • Materials: Three small cards or a notebook, pencil, a pretend microphone (wooden spoon, cardboard tube)
  • Participants: 1 child + 1 adult to interview; a second adult to support the first few times
  • Supervision: Light — adult helps prepare the questions, then steps back during the interview

Rationale & Objective

Asking questions is one of the main tools young children have for learning about things they cannot work out by looking. Chouinard’s (2007) monograph, drawing on recorded parent–child talk and diary studies, found that preschoolers ask questions at a remarkable rate, that most of them seek information rather than attention, and that children keep asking when the answer they get is not informative — the questions are doing real cognitive work. Frazier, Gelman & Wellman (2009) showed the same thing for “why” and “how” questions: preschoolers were satisfied by a real explanation and re-asked or offered their own when they did not get one. Yet question-asking is fragile. Engel (2011) documents how rarely children’s own curiosity questions are heard once they enter classrooms, and argues that adults who welcome and model questions keep the habit alive. Ronfard and colleagues’ (2018) review divides question-asking into four components a 5-year-old is still learning — initiating a question, formulating it, expressing it, and evaluating and following up on the answer. An interview practises all four with a person who genuinely knows something the child does not. This corresponds to Head Start ELOF Goal P-ATL 11 and to the subdomain’s own yardstick of several genuine inquiry questions within one activity.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: needs the adult to supply the questions; makes statements instead of questions (“I have a dog too”); asks, then does not wait for or listen to the answer
  • Developing: asks two or three prepared questions, mostly “what” questions, with the picture cards as prompts; listens to answers; needs a whisper to think of a follow-up
  • Proficient: asks three or more genuine questions including “why” or “how”; produces at least one unplanned follow-up that builds on an answer; can report one thing learned afterwards
  • Advanced: chooses who to interview based on what they want to know (“Grandpa knows about trains”); strings several follow-ups into a conversation; notices and says when an answer did not really answer the question

Safety Notes

  • Interview only people you know and trust, with you present — keep the usual family rules about talking to strangers clear, and never send a child to knock on doors alone
  • Ask the adult beforehand so they are relaxed and unhurried; a rushed or dismissive answer can make a hesitant child reluctant to ask again
  • Do not force a shy or slow-to-warm-up child to perform — let them whisper the question to you to pass on, or start with a familiar relative on a video call
  • Children who rarely ask questions, or who cannot yet form simple what/where/why questions at age 5, may benefit from a conversation with a speech-language therapist

Hints

  • Playfulness: a press badge on a string, a “Kitchen News” theme tune, and a dramatic sign-off (“This is Maya, reporting from Grandma’s garden”) turn it into a show. Recording a short clip on a phone makes many children ask more
  • Sustain interest: keep a “people we’ve interviewed” page with a drawing of each person and one fact. Let the child choose the next target — the bus driver, the dentist, an aunt who lived abroad
  • Common mistake: feeding the child every question, or jumping in to rephrase. A clumsy question the child invented is worth more than a polished one you supplied. Also resist turning it into a quiz afterwards
  • Limited space: needs no space at all — interview the parent who is cooking dinner, or do it by phone from the sofa
  • Cross-domain: drawing question cards and “notes” (early writing); retelling what was learned (narrative skills); thinking about what the other person knows that you don’t (perspective-taking); saying thank you and taking turns in conversation (social skills)
  • Progression: one prepared question to a parent → three questions to a relative → adding a follow-up → interviewing a less familiar adult with you nearby → child plans the whole interview and reports back to the family

Sources

  • Chouinard, M.M. (2007), “Children’s questions: A mechanism for cognitive development,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 72(1)
  • Frazier, Gelman & Wellman (2009), “Preschoolers’ search for explanatory information within adult–child conversation,” Child Development, 80(6)
  • Ronfard, Zambrana, Hermansen & Kelemen (2018), “Question-asking in childhood: A review of the literature and a framework for understanding its development,” Developmental Review, 49
  • Engel, S. (2011), “Children’s need to know: Curiosity in schools,” Harvard Educational Review, 81(4)
  • Head Start ELOF — Approaches to Learning, Goal P-ATL 11 (child shows interest in and curiosity about the world around them)
  • Teaching Strategies GOLD — Objective 11d (shows curiosity and motivation)