News And Events

Documenting Children's Learning

Planning and assessment is part of the cycle of noticing, recognising and responding to children’s interests and learning. Often this happens spontaneously throughout each day as our Educators, families and Visiting Teachers work in partnership to support each child in care. Together we try to work out what a child likes to do and what might happen if we provide an activity so they can experience more of what they like.

There are two ways in which we document the planning and assessment of a child's learning - either online or in a physical scrapbook. At Nurtured at Home, we particularly love using scrapbooks for a few different reasons:

Scrapbooks are easily accessible for tamariki, which lets them revisit their stories, and provide us with their own interpretation of what they see.

The use of scrapbooks also supports the development of written and verbal language skills - it's also a lot of fun!

When we document children’s learning in portfolios, in addition to recording what we see, and what the child has told us, we also use the language of learning outcomes. For example, we might see children engaged as a group in imaginative play such as pretending being animals. When we write a story about what we see, we acknowledge the children’s imaginative play and the roles they played, and we also include a learning outcome from Te Whāriki such as:

Over time and with guidance and encouragement, children become increasingly capable of: Using a range of strategies and skills to play and learn with others / te ngakau aroha.

Looking through scrapbooks together is a really special and often enlightening moment in the day, and children love to take these home to share with their families too!