‘Documenting Children’s Thinking’

1. ‘Documenting Children’s Thinking’ Presented by Carrie Rose for

2. Why do we document children? • Documentation is a tool to make visible what we have learned, and the learning processes of the children • What and how are they learning • It’s a collection of traces that we can use to help us see the process of learning as the teacher

3. What do we know about documenting children? • It is important to understand, monitor and have knowledge on children’s development • It supports our ideas for planning once we know what the children are interested in learning about • Children’s development information is based on an average and all children will develop at their own pace • Our program must support children at all levels to develop through the experiences we provide

4. How else can we use documentation: • Examples of children's work and written reflections on the processes in which the children are engaged can be displayed in predominant parental areas • The documents reveal how the children planned, carried out, and completed the displayed work • This allows us to educate parents on the importance of play to development of their children Reference: The Contribution of Documentation to the Quality of Early Childhood Education, Lilian G. Katz and Sylvia C. Chard

5. Challenges • It can be time consuming • It can be boring and repetitive • It can be hard to know what to write to make it interesting • It can be hard to be creative

6. Ways to document:

7. Story telling

8. Writing Stories Should ‘Give The Picture in the Mind’ It is easy to be ‘clinical’ in our writing of children. • Children's games and play are stories to be told. • You need to capture the reader from the very first line, and • Show the reader the child’s competence!

9. Writing a story that will give the ‘image in the mind’

12. A child’s thinking can be documented through their markings and drawings on paper…. • Collated over a period of time they will show: ‘The essence, the how, the way in which they learn’ • ‘Documentation is about • how this happens and • sharing the learning context’

13. Marisa (2.5 years) drawing in January

14. Marisa drawing February

15. Marisa(now 3) drawing June

16. Marisa (3 years) drawing August

17. Drawing Turns to Writing in October

18. Document: • the thinking • the investigation • the fun • and then interpret it & fingerprint it as yours. Photos taken should be able to tell the story with or without words…… That’s what teachers do!

19. For example: What do babies learn as they increasingly get more skill in movement ... Collecting a Series of Photos will give insight into learning

20. Children are Initiators rather than ‘passive recipients’ of any learning Our photos can tell us about their interests