Assessment and Documentation in Kindergarten

Making Learning Visible 

Keeping students' ideas and questions physically present in the classroom by posting quotes and speech bubbles helps connect student learning to what they are curious about and provides a place for them to return to throughout the inquiry.

It used to be that the teacher will post the students' products up on a bulletin board with a title... Now through documentation and the way that teachers assess students' learning process through videos and pictures and voice recordings, and then make it visible to families and other adults by making more meaningful behind what the children are learning about at different times during the learning experience. 

I believe that documentation is a powerful way to celebrate successful moments or advances in learning and the best way to do it is posting documentation on a bulletin board as a way to share the learning community. Another way to document is through technology using apps like Seesaw, Edsby, PicCollage, etc..

Bulletin Boards:

These can be a powerful tool to make learning visible. In our class, we usually ask the students what they want to share about their learning. We show them pictures that we have taken of them showing learning and then ask what they were doing in those pictures. We add titles to the pictures and then scribe their connections and conversations. We also add our own perspective to the board by adding a learning story or a summary about what we have noticed from our students' work and collaboration. We include students' thoughts about their work, what was hard, surprising, or exciting. We ask for feedback from the students and other adults, parents, staff, or community visitors about the board. Asking the students to document can show us the students' perspective about what's worth paying attention to and foster a greater sense of student ownership.

Technology:

We find it very useful to include assessment information and share documentation through apps on iPads and/or phones. We are most active in documenting on Edsby (a board initiative) to share with parents and on Twitter (social media) to share with community partners, colleagues, etc.. 
First we identify the focus of the documentation, we select the right tool, collect the information, shape it, share it with colleagues, type up any important conversations and use the documentation to inform next steps or share back with the students.
Sharing photographs: to communicate information about the learning (like who was there, what were they doing...) They can focus our attention to the learning moment. 
Videos: captures visual and audio of an experience (body language, dialogue)
Typed up notes/observations: simple way to capture student thinking via quotes and parts of conversation or what we've observed. 
Sometimes we combine pictures and quotes or observations into PicCollages and post them around the room. Speech bubbles are awesome at making individual thinking visible and easy to implement. They can be posted on the walls, bulletin boards, stick notes, poster, panels, or cubbies. They can be included in a classroom newsletter, attached to the contents of a portfolio, or shared online. 
Note: Sharing Information with parents who are not active with technology or are not regular visitors to the class...

• Send pictures and quotes of students home with report cards or newsletters or even on a regular basis
• share their portfolios at interviews, parent engagement sessions, or other events
• not every child might be included in a documentation board so make sure you have pictures in binders of previous bulletin boards so parents can see or send home photocopies of the boards.