Portfolios and Home/School Journals

I had a moment to collect my thoughts about my recent training I received and I posted those on my personal blog, and you're welcome to hop over there see what I wrote. I want to tell you about some additional and exciting things I'll be implementing at Casa T!

Even though things are on a small and intimate scale here at the house, we will begin using a Home/School Journal. I will be sending home these notebooks which will serve as a wonderful communication tool between the teacher and parents (the more communication, the better). Once a week, I'll be taking the time to write about your child--observations, behavioral patterns, interests, etc. I will send this journal home with your child and I'm asking parents to respond within the week. You should use this space to record your thoughts, hope, frustrations, suggestions, and observations.

Documentation is a huge part of Reggio. I've been doing this already with the blog, the many photographs and the detailed 'highlights of our day' entries, but I will also begin a Reggian Portfolio, for each child. Let me further explain about 'Documentation' before anybody gets nervous with that word, as I did when I first heard it because of its connotations it had with my experience as a public school teacher.

One difference between documentation in negotiated learning and portfolios that are becoming more popular in American schools is that porfolios are touted as a more authentic form of assessment, primarily because portfolios are the actual artifacts that children produce as they work, which can include drawing, diagrams, math sheets, photographs, and even videotapes that when studied chronologically and in all their qualitative detail, present a unique path of progress for each child.

Documentation, as they mean it in Reggio terms, is more focused on children than one child. Even when a child is featured in documentation, the intent is to have the viewer treat this child as a representative child. The documentation presents the spirit of the school, the pedagogical principles at work. Documentation tries to raise questions about children's thinking and teaching strategies rather than to mark the progress of all individual children. Technically, documentation is not an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching for all the children. The viewer is asked to assume that what one sees in the documentation of four children has happened at other times with all the children. Documentation presents the wisdom of the teachers who write the explanations and provocations, but documentation, by itself, is not a systematic evaluation of instruction. These two objectives, evaluation and documentation, should be kept separate.

So, with that being said, the portfolios will focus on relationships, interests, and the ways the children express themselves. They will have a balance of individual and group experiences.

Is your head spinning yet? Don't worry. ;) It's easier than it sounds and with practice, I'll become quick and efficient at it. I just want to explain this to the parents so you are aware of what is being implemented here. I also want to make sure you're aware that Reggio Emilia is not a curriculum; it is a philosophical approach to working with children. It's a wonderful thing.

*Also If you haven't signed up for materials for next week's focus, please check out the post below here and let me know if you have any of the following to contribute. It would be great if they're dropped off sometime this week, so we're prepared to start next week.

THANK YOU!

Love, Andrea