A Guide to Documenting Learning
Making Thinking Visible, Meaningful, Shareable, and Amplified
Foreword by Alan November
Corwin Teaching Essentials
Brain-Friendly Teaching & Learning | Formative Assessment | Teaching Methods & Learning Styles
A new approach to contemporary documentation and learning
What is learning? How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster meaningful and active engagement? A Guide to Documenting Learning helps educators answer these questions.
Documenting learning is a process that makes thinking about learning processes visible, meaningful, shareable, and amplified. It facilitates student-driven learning, helping students reflect on and articulate their own learning processes. It also helps teachers reflect on their own learning and classroom practice. When teachers are co-creators with their students, both gain valuable insights that inform future learning and empower students as engaged learners. This unique how-to book
- Explains the purposes and different types of documentation
- Teaches different “LearningFlow” systems to help educators integrate documentation throughout the curriculum
- Provides authentic examples of documentation in real classrooms
- Is accompanied by a robust companion website where readers can find even more documentation examples and video tutorials
Written for educators of any grade level, this book provides insights into contemporary learning and professional learning environments, and emphasizes the power of technology to amplify teaching and learning beyond school walls.
"This book touches upon information that would be useful to any school system because it scaffolds ways that educators can help students make their thinking known, which will only improve their future reasoning skills."
LaQuita Outlaw, Principal
Bay Shore Middle School, Bay Shore, NY
"This book will become an important guide for schools and educators to have on their shelves. The content is original, highly organized and presents many new ideas on documenting learning. It takes what is happening in the world of teaching right now and elevates it to a coherent pedagogical process. The graphics are a fantastic resource."
Andrea Hernandez, Educational Consultant
amplifiEDucation and edtechworkshop.blogspot.com, Jacksonville, FL
Free resources
Blogging Challenge
This resource from A Guide to Documenting Learning provides guidance for participating in blogging challenges, which provide opportunities to develop your documenting skills.
"In Documenting Learning, the authors seek to qualify, rather than quantify, what contemporary learning is all about: looking for, capturing, reflecting, sharing, and amplifying the learning that is taking place. In this text, they break down these actions and how they apply to before, during, and after learning moments and describe a new way to approach contemporary work and self-determined learning."
"I love the idea that students can be aware of their learning. It can be documented, reflected on, curated, and shared in order to garner feedback and that the student owns the learning every step of the way."
"This book touches upon information that would be useful to any school system because it scaffolds ways that educators can help students make their thinking known, which will only improve their future reasoning skills."
"Educators trying to create compelling learning experiences confront the daunting challenge of content coverage requirements and expectations of teaching to the test. Students and their thinking are often invisible as the only representations of learning made public are marks and rankings. Silvia and Janet take the inspirational Reggio Emilia approach and scale it into new contexts to create deep learning experiences for today’s learners, with an eye on the future of learning as well."
"This book will become an important guide for schools and educators to have on their shelves. The content is original, highly organized and presents many new ideas on documenting learning. It takes what is happening in the world of teaching right now and elevates it to a coherent pedagogical process. The graphics are a fantastic resource."
A Guide To Documenting Learning is a practical book for educators that asks the questions, "What is learning? How do we look for, capture, reflect on, and share learning to foster meaningful and active engagement?"
There are lots of useful teachings, resources, and scenarios no matter what age group you work with or what educational setting you’re in. The book could truly apply to kindergarten teachers, right up to adult learners. The concepts covered would be priceless for administrators who are looking for ways to improve their school as a whole. This book should also be required reading for all pre-service teachers.
The whole concept of what it means to be literate has changed since most of us were at school ourselves. Students (and adults!) now need to do a lot more than read and write in order to be truly literate. This includes being able to communicate and express ideas in a variety of ways -- using all sorts of digital tools, video, audio, hyperlinked writing, social media etc. This book breaks down exactly how to do that to ensure our students can thrive in a global community.
What I loved about this book is there are lots of ideas for tools mentioned, however, it is more about the processes than specific tools. The learning comes first. The QR codes and companion website bring the book alive—there is extra information and a challenge etc. on http://www.documenting4learning.com. This could be ideal if a group of teachers wanted to study the book together.
A Guide To Documenting Learning is not the type of book you read once and put away. You could definitely dip back into it regularly throughout the school year for new ideas and inspiration.
