preview

Evaluating Documentation

Decent Essays
Open Document

The article was a very descriptive and useful article to refer back to. After learning all of the types of observations over the semester, I found this article to be a very short, but handy “bible” to summarize everything. Documentation is a great tool for teachers, children, and their families. It is something that benefits everyone. Documentation helps teachers draw a conclusion on certain behaviors, skills, or development areas. There are many ways to observe and record a child. All of the forms focus in on different areas, which is why they are so helpful. Being a teacher, it can be hard to just use your judgement to determine what the problem is and then figure out how to solve it. One thing that the article says about documentation is …show more content…

One thing that really stood out to me was that “to become a documenter, one must first understand what to observe and what to do with the information.” My problem as a teacher was that I never really used any type of observation form until starting this class. After starting this class, I began to use all kinds of forms to help my class. Now I’m to the point where I’m like well I have the information, now how do I make the right decisions? I never would have thought that documentation came in so many steps and stages. Now that I have read this article, I feel more confident about finding ways to help my students advance. I plan to use this information to target in on individual children and everyone as a class. I will use documentation to communicate with my student’s parents and to display that they are learning through their art and pictures. I will also hang up work samples to share. Even though a lot of the information in the article I was already familiar with, I found all of it to be useful towards my teaching styles. It helps me and my students down a road to success. I did not know about the stages of documenter experience. When I read about this, I found it interesting and very useful because everyone needs a guide every now and then. This guide was short, but showed me how things are appropriately done through documentation. I also did not know that you could form documentations on families and …show more content…

I feel like I have bettered myself as a teacher and a worker overall. Things have been a lot easier for me now that I truly understand the importance of documentation. I also feel like it has helped my level of communication and interaction with my student’s parents. I have copied the review section in the back of my textbook that lists all of the observation forms and what they focus on skill wise. I find myself referring to this list on a daily basis. And by doing so, I have created a more comfortable bond with the children in my classroom! I have also learned that when using documentation, to always keep at least copies on file and in portfolios. They are a great thing to look back on especially to determine progression over time. I used to throw things away after a certain amount of time and now I know the true importance of keeping them! I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot more than I had expected. Overall, I feel like I am a changed teacher and observer outside of school!

Get Access