Visible Learning - Not Just for the Kids!

Now that the new school year is in full swing, it's time to start implementing all of the ideas that have been collecting over the long summer months. This year one of my teaching goals is to be more intentional in the ways I display my own thinking in regard to the children's interests and inquiries. In our classroom, one of the ways we will accomplish this is with a "We're thinking..." board.

Many factors led to the decision to give this board a try:

          Emphasis on making learning visible - 

          As reflective practitioners in a Reggio-inspired preschool setting, we make it a priority to foster visible learning in our classroom. But it's also also vital to remember that teachers also bring much to the inquiries and discussions we engage in with children. Having an intentional space in the classroom for teachers to record and reflect on their thinking will help foster an environment of learning, reflection, and co-construction of knowledge between children and teachers.

          Transparency, communication, and collaboration - 

          I'm very fortunate to teach and learn alongside three incredible assistant facilitators each day (Jayne, Danon, and Townsley) and the reality of the situation is that it is nearly impossible to sit down together each day to share everything we have observed about the children. We do have a weekly team meeting where we all sit down to discuss our documentation and plan for the following week, but the board helps to ensure that we don't forget anything we've noticed and also helps us notice patterns and directions in the children's thinking, which informs the work we do with them.

Ideas into Action

The really excellent thing about the board is that when the time comes for us to get together as a team to plan for the upcoming week, all of our documentation from the previous week is collected in one place.

This year we are using an adapted version of the emergent curriculum form found in We Are All Explorers: Teaching and Learning with Reggio Principles in Urban Settings (Scheinfeld, Haigh, Scheinfeld 2008).

We altered the form slightly to meet the needs of our center and our classroom. In previous years, I would have been hesitant to display the form with its arrows, scratch outs, additions, and changes but now I feel differently. There is actually a strange beauty in making learning visible - perhaps because it can be such a mess.

The truth of the matter is, learning is often messy and can rarely be placed in tidy little boxes. In reality, there are so many ways to learn (we Reggio folks don't strive to embody the Hundred Languages for nothing!) that thinking of it as only neat and linear is pretty shortsighted. I'm so thrilled to be working toward a more realistic model this year - and creating space for the thought processes of the teachers will certainly support that model. Plus, what an amazing example we are setting for the children, showing them that the process of thinking things through is something we value in our community. What a fine example - that we all have ideas to offer and that we are on this learning journey together.