What Should I Document in Early Childhood Education?

Question

Answer

When documenting individual child learning there are several things to look at and document, but I don't recommend doing all of these things the first time. Choose one or two of the following items to collect. You might choose one of these options per week. 

• Child's work samples 
• Individual child growth and development observations 
• Evidence of meeting standards 
• Child's questions and ideas

If you want to start looking at group learning, focus on one of the following items to document.

• Experiences
• Expected behaviors
• Projects
• Evidence of meeting standards
• Children's work
• Curriculum ideas or experiences
• Families and relationships
• Children's, teachers', and parents' inquiries

An experience happening in the class might be that somebody is bringing in their new pet rabbit and we're all going to share that today. I'm going to watch how all the children interact with a pet rabbit. It might be mealtime and I just want to see how children do with family-style meals. Pick an experience and start observing that as a whole group. It's a very holistic view. You're not focusing on individuals per se, you're looking at the whole experience of family-style meals. Maybe you're going to collect writing samples for the whole class and then lay them all out and think, "Wow, half of these children know how to write their names and the other half are still just doing little squiggles for words. Maybe I need to rethink how I'm teaching them to write their names and write letters."

Think about children's work samples, not on an individual child basis, but as a collective or as a whole. Maybe I'm looking at a behavior. "I've noticed that transitions after lunch are really rough in my classroom. Maybe I'll spend some time observing what happens during this time. I could turn on a video camera to observe and document what happens during that time." I might notice that a couple of children are really tired and maybe a couple are getting moody because they're tired and others are getting more excited and more energized. Sometimes, when children get overtired, their energy level changes. So, I might look for behavioral things.

I might use a curriculum idea or an experience. A video works great to do this. If I lead a group time with a group of children, I might video that and then listen to their ideas and their experiences. When I'm leading a group, I hear different things and notice different things when I rewatch it. Another option is to have a teaching assistant, a parent, or somebody else document it for you. A project is great to focus on doing KWL charts to document what is done by the group. I love to do that and then create a class book or a class PowerPoint that loops and children can watch it. Sometimes I focus on families and relationships and how they're a part of our curriculum. Other times I want to make sure our whole group understands certain vocabulary. This helps show that we are meeting that core knowledge or that early learning guideline.  I also want to be able to address all the other teachers, parents, and others' inquiries.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Documentation: Making Children's Learning Visible, presented by Hilary Seitz, PhD.