3 Categories in Play – Delight, Wonder, Choice
Types of observation and documentation tools:
- Portfolio
- Photographs
- Brief notes
- Video recordings
- Learning journals
2) YouTube Video – Pedagogical Documentation – Early Childhood
This professional learning video offers ideas for what to document when educators are engaging in the process of pedagogical documentation, such as:
- documenting children’s ideas, questions, theories, etc. that arise spontaneously in their play
- documenting answers/findings to a teacher research question
- documenting the process/journey of a child led research question
- documenting children’s material investigations
3) You Tube Video – Documenting Children’s Learning
4) CREATE & SHARE 2 – Child’s Play Instrument
In observation of the child, from a teacher perspective the instrument I would utilize for both teacher and child is a camera; the camera is a tool where the child can observe and capture an image
“Take photos of things that are important to you while you play”. This encourages the child to observe a image, and have a reflection of why they took the photo. They can also communicate why the photo was important to them.
For the educator/teacher – Photo Documentation – is an Objective Observation of what is happening.
Play Behaviors of the child can be observed with ‘social interaction, cooperation, problem-solving and in the child’s creativity’.
With a love for photography, the perfect instrument to capture’s a child’s play and interaction is a camera. This can be utilized by both the educator and the child in indoor or outdoor play. Photographs can then be used for documentation purposes, as photos often tell a story and capture the true moment in time.
A camera allows a child to contribute to play photographs that enables them to assume a position focused on observing and making crucial decisions considering the importance during play.
Play photographs contributed by the educator/teacher enhance the documentation process through learning procedures. A camera is an engaging instrument and can really capture the moment of a child’s play. If the child voices why the photo was captured – then further context can be applied to any documentation.
