Documentation & Journals: We believe that experiences alone are insufficient to promote meaningful learning. Reflection and representation of what has been learned must go hand in hand with experience.  This is why documentation is so important to us. Teachers at Discovery Woods are careful observers and serve as scribes to document the process of learning.

For children, documentation is a visual placeholders for their learning, and enables them to deepen their investigations. It also serves as a kind of debriefing or re-visiting of experience during which new understandings can be “clarified, deepened, and strengthened” (Chard, Katz 1996)  For adults, documentation informs our teaching, deepens our understanding of child development and strengthens our relationships with the children. It helps us to challenge our assumptions, and in sharing our work and understandings with colleagues we grow and become better teachers.

You will see journals almost every day. We ask that you view them with your child and document his or her comments word for word.