The staff at my daughter’s nursery spend a lot of time compiling observation books for each of the children. They’re crammed full of photographs, comments, Post-It notes and drawings, but I wonder what’s the actual purpose of them?
We have kept DD1’s (Dear Daughter 1) Learning Journey since she left nursery to go to school and have a folder that her childminder put together. Then we were recently given DD2’s Learning Journey because the book was full, so my husband and I spent a lovely evening looking through them, reminiscing and comparing our daughters at different stages. The girls both really enjoyed looking through them too.
DD2’s key person does sporadically give us her book to look at, but there is no pattern to this. Looking back at the dates when I signed the book, there was once a two-month gap between seeing it followed by a nine-month wait. My friend gets very frustrated by this and asks the staff for the book, although they are not always forthcoming.
It’s lovely to see evidence of what DD2 has been doing at nursery, it’s like an insight into her world away from us. I particularly like to see photos of her interacting with her friends and when staff directly report amusing things that she’s said and done – giggling while playing ‘peepo’ through a plastic easel or making tea in the mud kitchen.
The books are incredibly dense with lots of short comments alongside photos, sometimes sequences of pictures overlapping. The key person also references various areas of learning with lots of initials – PSED, CL, PD, etc written in coloured pens. Unfortunately these, while looking impressively professional, make little sense to me as a parent.
NEXT STEPS
While the observations are great for detailing what my daughter was doing at that time – it’s nice to know that at four years and three months, DD1 could take turns with her peers while playing a board game and recognise the number four – I see little evidence of what they were planning to help her to progress and how she compared to her peers. Are they recording next steps in another document, perhaps? We’ve never been talked through the books and had the relevance of the documentation explained to us.
Since DD1 left nursery, the staff have introduced a ‘child self-assessment’ where the children are shown their book and make a comment. Photos of them doing this are also pasted in the book. While pictures of DD2, aged one year and eight months, pointing at photos of herself and saying ‘Me’ are all very cute, it seems a pointless and somewhat ridiculous politically correct exercise.
WORKING DOCUMENT
These books are obviously regarded as important. DD2’s move to the pre-school room was delayed while her book was completed (Working Mum, 11 January 2016) but then why was it simply handed to me to keep? It seems that the staff are using up a lot of time putting together books in order to fulfil an Ofsted requirement and compile a keepsake for families, rather than using them as a working document from which to plan the children’s learning and development.
I’ve heard of nurseries that send the books to primary school with the child so that their new teacher can get an appreciation of what the child has already done and achieved. I wish I’d thought to take DD1’s Learning Journey along when we went to meet her class teacher – it would have been more insightful than her being asked to count to ten. Mind you, it would take up a whole morning to read it. I doubt the teacher would have thanked me.
A WORD OF ADVICE
Sharing a child’s learning journey regularly with their parents is essential, says Zoe Kimber
Settings record children’s learning in many different ways. But what is imperative is that these records are as parent- and child-friendly as possible, while still providing us, as practitioners, with enough information to make professional judgements about a child’s development. There is, it seems, an art to assessment and presenting it well.
We need to use learning journeys skilfully so that they present a child’s development in its truest form, so turning these records from a nostalgic keepsake into a professional tool:
Ensure learning journeys are always accessible to children and parents, so allowing children to take ownership of their record of learning and parents to look at it whenever they choose.
Encourage parents to add to their children’s learning records to create a two-way flow of information. Celebrating a child’s achievements at home and in nursery is vital to early learning.
Share children’s learning journeys with them regularly. Talking through recorded activities and photographs enables them to reflect on their learning, as well as building their self-esteem.
Use clear, parent-friendly next steps – for example, ‘two stars and a wish’ (two positive achievements and one idea for improvement) – so parents understand their child’s progress and how to support it.
As well as using learning journeys in parent meetings to explain a child’s development, use them as a prompt for parents to ask questions about their child’s learning and achievements.
Learning journeys are, above all, a working document and at their heart the child’s voice, development and next steps in learning should shine through.
Zoe Kimber is a nursery teacher at Mary Swanick Primary School, Chesterfield. For more on observation and planning, see ‘Think again’, www.nurseryworld.co.uk
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