59
reflect on the thinking process that the students are experiencing. During the documentation
process, the teachers must respect and promote the investigation of the child, remembering that
the learners construct their own knowledge and succeed only from their experiences. In addition,
in many cases, a student finds new ways and areas of interest in a specific assignment, for which
the teacher must know how to listen and pay attention to the questions generated by these
wonderings, understanding that teachers are not the only ones that are in a position to come up
with questions and answers in a classroom.
What do we document?
It is important that before we act,
we have established a clear objective of
what we want to achieve. Sometimes, while
we are planning new targets emerge, and
for that reason it is crucial to be clear on
where it is we want the project to go. When
goals are clear and focused towards the
understanding
of
concepts
and
the
acquisition skills, and not towards the mere
storage
of
content,
the
teacher
can
incorporate different thinking tools, such as thinking routines or concept maps. These are the
processes that are documented by letters made by students (or teachers if needed), by
photographs, videos, tables, anecdotes, images, etc. At the same time, it is crucial that teachers
strive to capture conversations of students who are in free play, in the park, in class discussions,
doing group work, and performing actions like speaking.
With that in mind, the teacher’s work does not end with documenting the students’
thinking. What really makes documentation powerful is the periodical re-visit with students,
parents, professional colleagues, and alone to assess the processes that these documents contain,
and analyze, reflect on, and connect then to other subjects.