Interviewing Skills – Kindergarten Admission
Recall story details
Our programme is designed to help encourage children to develop confidence, fluency, and better speaking and communication skills through engagement in stories, pictures and theme-based learning. KidsEdge has designed programmes that fit your child’s needs. Get into your dream school!
- During the interview, a teacher will often read a story and children will then be asked questions relating to the story. Questions such as “Who was in the story?”, “What happened in the story?”, “When did it happen?”, “Do you like the story and why?” etc.
- For tips on how to answer questions relating to a story or how to tell a story, please refer to KidsEdge’s Interview Tips section on “How to Tell a Story”.
Follow Instructions
- The most important aspect of an interview is the child’s ability to understand and follow simple instructions.
- The teachers check the lateral thinking ability of the child along with the manner that he responds to difficulty and his confidence level.
Responsiveness & Communication
- During the interview, a teacher will often toss a question out to the group of children to see who will respond. Some kids will be quiet, while others will be very excited trying to get their answers heard.
- Children are asked, in some cases about their family members, where they live, when their birthday is and the puzzle or activity they are playing with.
- Our Active Talkers programme can be considered as a complementary course to the interviewing skills programme.
Draw & Tell / Picture Description
Are you able to describe what you have drawn?
Another popular interview activity is to get the children to draw a picture and describe what they have drawn. The objective of this exercise is not to test how well the children can draw, but rather to assess how articulate and descriptive they are.
Picture description is another important interview skill to acquire.
For tips on how to describe a picture, please refer to KidsEdge’s Interview Tips section on “How to Describe a Picture”.
Other Kindergarten Basic Skills
- Children are expected to be able to identify and draw basic shapes like rectangle, square, triangle and circle.
- They may also be tested on number and letter recognition. While they will not be asked to do any writings, they are expected to be able to write and/or spell their names.
- For children with a long name, such as Elizabeth, parents may consider teaching them the short form, i.e. Liz. Let’s check our Interview Tips section for more interview tips.