Documentation Foundations

The key to truly meaningful, Reggio-inspired documentation? Reflecting the children’s thinking back to them!

In our view, it’s not the most elaborate or polished — or even the most creative — documentation that is the most effective, it’s the documentation that makes learning most clearly visible!

Ideally, documentation at PCS includes:
+ an image of the learner (often engaged in a learning activity)
+ the child’s own words
+ the child’s own handwriting and/or artwork
+ the question/inquiry guiding the work

Together, these elements paint the clearest picture of a student’s thinking and serve as a visual reminder in the classroom of each child’s active role as a learner.

Here, as first graders embark on a unit focused on finding our place within the new Cutchogue community, they’re documenting an initial brainstorming session about the definition of community. With photos, their own words and speech bubbles, the board quite literally makes their thinking visible!

Of course, not all documentation reflects students’ learning and thinking so literally. But the learning story should be just as clear — “we are active learners, this is what we’re working on, and this is our current thinking!”