Documentation

As facilitator, you will be observing each child's learning and development throughout the day in various settings and interactions, both inside and outside the school: in play, in project work, in conversations and individual self-directed tasks. The documentation we would like to produce is individualised, highly detailed, and comprises cognitive, emotional, physical, social and moral well-being.

One of the tools we use to document the children's learning are learning stories, which can be individual or collective.

We encourage you to work with notebooks and cameras as a matter of routine, and draw from these different sources to assess the strengths and needs of the children, provide sparks for projects and develop the curriculum.

The documentation gathered can include annotated work selected by adults and children, photographs, photocopies of children's work, transcripts of collaborative exchanges between the children, and children's own comments.

Functions of Documentation

Documentation at Kaleide International School serves three key functions, in line with the Reggio Emilia approach:

1. to provide children with a concrete and visible memory of what they have said and done, explore previous understandings and build on them;

2. to give facilitators an insight into the children's learning processes, their understanding and misunderstandings of everyday concepts, objects and events. In this sense, documentation becomes a tool for research, and a spur to continuous improvement and renewal;

3. to provide parents and the public with detailed information about what happens in the school as a means of eliciting their reactions and support.

Additionally, we can draw on the work of the educator Margaret Carr, and write down documentation in the form of “learning stories”, which include the context, the relationship with adults and peers, the activity or task at hand, and an interpretation from a story-teller who knows the child well and focuses on evidence of new or sustained interest, involvement, challenge, communication and responsibility.

Please check out Assessment in Early Childhood Settings by Margaret Carr, and Planning in the Moment with Young Children by Anna Ephgrave, which are available at the school.

When assessments are documented in this way, they become not only public, but permanent, and the children, the facilitators, the family and the wider community can all have access to them.