Documentation

The importance of documentation to teaching and to a child's learning:

Teaching:

• Provides a memory, and evaluation a final report or an archive of the work and progress in a classroom.
• Provides a document of the teacher and child with their combined thought processes which improves communication.
• Enables the teacher to revisit learning experiences.
• Helps teachers stay close to the learning in their curriculum and helps improve the design of future curriculums.
• Improves sense of listening
• Helps recognize the value of other's point of view and interpretation.

Parents:

• Allows parents to witness what occurs in their child's classroom and see what their children might not be able to verbalize.
• Parents feel more welcome in their child's school when they see the documentation displayed.
• Strengthens home/ school relationships.

Children:

• Children will benefit from the increased awareness of their teachers and parents to their school activities.
• They will be validated and accounted for.
• Their voice will be hear through the teacher's increased listening skills.
• Curriculum will be more geared specifically toward their learning which fosters positive school experiences.

Challenges:

• Interrupting the flow in the classroom to document.
• Choosing a method of documentation that works best for the classroom situation.
• Finding time to document effectively where the information is still fresh in mind.

Strategies to address challenges:

• Chose a time each day where there is a break in the class activity to jot a few notes.
• Have a camera handy to snap documenting moments during the day and organize daily.
• Experiment with different documenting methods and organization to find the most successful one.

Important things to document:

• Deep joy, engagement
• Silences
• High Stress Moments
• Dead zones
• Avoidance
• Criticism
• Interaction
• Panned and Spontaneous provocation
• Arrivals and departures.