I Documented Student Learning... Now What?

I documented student learning, but what do I do now in order to make my documentation meaningful?

Documentation is a topic that was first introduced to me by the Teaching For Creativity Institute at the Columbus Museum of Art back in 2011. Since then, I have explored the use of documentation in my classroom and recently our district is beginning to focus on the power of documentation in all classrooms. Because I have been having so many conversations about documentation lately, I decided to share some of the ways that I use documentation in my classroom.

Documenting student learning is only meaningful if we use our documentation! Collecting photographs, videos, quotes, etc is simply the first step. So what do I do with this data once I have collected it? Check out a few of the many ways in which I have found documentation useful...

Share it with your students!

In this activity, we were talking about the role of failure in the design process of new inventions. I shared a personal failure of mine with my students and asked them to brainstorm both "helpful" and "not helpful" ways in which I could respond to my failure. The documentation of their ideas is displayed in the classroom and used as a resource board. When they run into failures, they can visit the board and use the ideas they generated. 

Documentation wall! One wall in my classroom is dedicated to documenting Dublin's "6 Habits of Thinkers". As I see examples of students using the 6 habits, I document what they are doing and post it on the wall. This clarifies for students exactly what I am looking for, promotes the use of the habits as they get excited about seeing themselves on the wall, and provides a space for them to reflect on the process of learning to use the 6 habits as they get to see an extended timeline of documentation. 

After a professional development session this year, I was needing to document the process that our group took, so I used PowerPoint to turn my documentation into a timeline. During our next meeting, this allowed my group of educators to reflect on the process we took in the previous session and it set the building blocks to move forward in our learning. 

This has been my favorite! I started using speech bubbles in my documentation when I was documenting a conversation that took place among teachers in a professional development planning session. I had the documentation sitting on a side table in my classroom and I noticed that students were drawn to it. Students in all grades were taking the time to stop and read the conversation, which had to be such a boring conversation to them! I really thought about why they liked it so much and I think that it is the comic book-like quality of combining interesting images with speech bubbles. 

I started creating "comic book documentation" of important learning for students to revisit the next lesson, so I am constantly trying to bridge the gap between art classes since I only have my students for 45 minutes every 4 days. My students have been really engaged with these comics! 

One variation I have also started doing is using photographs and using blank speech bubbles. Students then reflect on what they were thinking or how they were feeling at the time and fill it in on the speech bubbles. 

What might the students be thinking or saying in these photographs?

Share it with your community! 

With each project that goes home, I also send home a page of information about the project. Including my documentation has made my community much more aware of the learning that takes place in my classroom. Because of documentation, I am able to include photographs, videos, and quotes in these project letters. 

    

This year I have been focusing a lot more emphasis over putting documentation in the hallways rather than display. Displaying finished art projects is kind of like going on an amazing week-long vacation, coming back, and describing your entire vacation to your friend simply by showing them the souvenir that you got on vacation. Documentation is like showing that friend a collection of photographs, videos, and quotes that highlight the most meaningful parts of your vacation. Which way would help your friend better understand how amazing your vacation was?

This year I have created a blog where I post my documentation and I also post documentation on Twitter. This has allowed my to share the learning that takes place in my room with my community and connect to educators across the world (yes, the world! I have made multiple connections through my blog to educators living in Europe and Asia)!

Reflect! Reflect! Reflect!

One thing that really helped me begin to organize and reflect upon my documentation was the set-up of Google Drive folders. My curriculum focuses on 9 practices of "Thinking Like an Artist," so I created a folder in Google Drive for each of my 9 practices. Now when I document from an iPad or my iPhone, I can use the Google Drive app to immediately upload the documentation into one of these folders. This organization allows me to see which practices are common in my classroom and which practices I need to focus on more. 

After a conversation with colleagues about what our study group might want to focus on, I wanted to figure out the concepts that dominated our conversation. I recorded the conversation, so I converted the audio file into written text using the Dictation & Speech tools on my Mac. I think pasted the conversation into a Wordle, which automatically counted the number of times each word was said and generated the graphic you see below. Seeing this graphic allows me to reflect on what our group focused on the most in our conversation. 

The Columbus Museum of Art also has a ton of powerful tools that can be used to focus on particular skills or concepts while analyzing documentation. I have been using these for the past couple months and they have provided me with a great structure to use when I am figuring out how to think through my documentation. 

I think this tool below will be very helpful for teachers to process and interpret their documentation. I videotaped an activity and filled this out afterwards, which I am glad I did because I was able to watch the activity multiple times and focus on 1 or 2 behaviors at a time.

 

I use an adapted form of CMA's "Thinking Like an Artist Rubric" in order to evaluate my own teaching. Using this tool, I was look at my documentation and reflect upon whether each class is in the early phase, implementation phase, or innovation phase for each of the 9 practices I teach. This allows me to calculate where I am at as an educator with each class and where I need to go with future lessons. 

I am working on some new ways to use my documentation so stay tuned!