Portfolio and pedagogical documentation go hand in hand. Both focus on making the child's learning visible and enabling professional formative assessment of playful learning.

Porfolio is a compilation of various documents that show progress on the learning goals that are defined in the curriculum.

Pedagogical documentation aims to capture the meaningful learning moments of children. Educators should then use these documents to modify their planning so that children learn even better.

Pedagogical documentation is an essential working method in early childhood education and it guarantees the best possible learning path for children. All valuable documents can be saved in a child's personal portfolio. But what type of documents should the portfolio include?

Documentation is observing for example children’s play, projects, discussions, ideas and inventions via taking photos, making notes, writing down explanations as well as tricky questions, saving artwork, videoing action, recording voice... Connect observations to the curriculum objectives, for example using Kindiedays.

Kindiedays Portfolio Learning

The process of pedagogical documentation is meaningful only, if you take advantage of the possibilities and challenges it offers. It is important to think how you can develop the activities. What themes, methods or goals should you choose next? What is your next step towards better early childhood education? (Tarkka 2018.)

Before documentation:

• First of all, decide what type of learning portfolio you are making as it matters in which from the observations are. A digital one, paper copy...?
• Have all the needed materials and tools ready for documenting! A camera, mobile phone, tablet, pen&paper...
• Think of what are meaningful and current questions, issues or topics in the group? It is impossible to document Everything so narrow it down.
• Once you have chosen a topic and method, start observing and documenting!

Main ideas for activities should always come from children, but here we show two all time favorites for many children. The activities can easily be modified for your groups' interests. These activities can also evolve over time as children learn more or get interested from a different angle - maintain the activity in the schedule for couple of weeks or until children loose interest.

Activities that have room for children's creativity, ideas and continuous play create more opportunities to practise multiple learning areas.

Do not tidy up instantly but leave it and children will return to it with new ideas the next day. The activity will become a project and with systematic documentation you will notice what children have learnt over time!

Check out these two activities that have learning objectives based on the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education.

What is Finnish ECEC?

STORYCRAFTING

The idea behind Storycrafting is to give the opportunity to a child, young person or an adult to talk about their thoughts.

Simply, ask the child to tell a story. Write the storydown exactly as the child tells it. When you get to "the end", read the story aloud in case the child wants to edit some parts.

You can for example ask the child to tell a story a week and you will end up with a lovely story book. When the story is ready, you can draw pictures of different scenes or even make a play out of it! If the child gives a permission, you can read stories outloud to others too.

Develops

Verbal expression: I engage in verbal expression + I share thoughts and experiences

Artistic & Cultural expression: I am able to imagine and evoke mental images

Here are 5 examples of documentation methods that increase child participation:

Portfolio

Kindiedays pedagogical Portfolio is a purposeful collection of child's work that makes learning visible and illustrates progress. The child participates to the process of compiling the portfolio. Educator sits down with each child regularly to see which documents to add in the child’s individual portfolio and discusses about the child’s learning journey, experiences, wishes etc.

Day of Children

Children decide all the activities that happen during the ‘Day of Children’. Educators find out children’s views and wishes prior the day and organize the day accordingly. Educators document children’s wishes, and outcomes on the ‘Day of Children’ and plan future activities accordingly.

Storycrafting

The Storycrafting method is suitable for everyone, and it is easy to use. The idea behind Storycrafting is to give the opportunity to a child to talk about own thoughts. During Storycrafting, the listener is truly interested and wants to listen to what the teller has to say in that moment. Child tells a story and educator writes it down from word to word as the child tells it. In case the child is not inspired, ask again next time. Aim is to find out child’s wishes, ideas, thoughts and experiences.

Say to a child (or a group of children or an adult):
”Please tell a story that you would like to tell.
I will write it down, just as you tell it.
When the story is finished, I will read it aloud.
At that point, you can correct the story or make changes, if you wish.”
(Riihelä 1991; Karlsson 2013)

When the story is ready, it can be shared with the group and child’s family and added to portfolio - with the child’s permission. Educator can use the gained knowledge in future planning.

A pedagogical portfolio is a purposeful collection of child’s work – not only a cute compilation or drawings and photos for families to look at.

Portfolio is a very powerful tool to support learning when used in a right way. The portfolio should show child’s progress and proof of learning. It is an effective method for formative assessment of playful learning and the basis for planning next areas to focus on.

See how you can compile three types of portfolios with Kindiedays:

JOURNAL REPORT

• CHOOSE JOURNAL REPORT when you need a general view of the child’s year, a compilation of memories of the academic year/term, a list of which events and activities the child has participated during a certain period.
• Includes: naps, learnings, events, journal posts, gallery photos.
• You may leave some categories out of the report (eg. naps) if it is not valid for your purposes.
• Date View of the Journal Report lists all the activities in a chronological order, including dates & times, photos, videos, notes and learnings. It makes a nice memory of the academic year or term.
• The alternative Category View groups the activity according categories following each other.

DAILY REPORT

• CHOOSE DAILY REPORT when you need: more detailed information of the child’s basic care, focused information eg. in the beginning of kindergarten (how the child has eaten, slept or participated in activities during the first weeks), detailed information about the child’s behaviour during a certain period (eg. parents divorce, new baby brother…)
• Includes: learnings, meals, bathroom, mood, naps, medication, notes, activities
• You may leave some categories out of the report (eg. naps) if it is not valid for your purposes

Learn about Kindiedays Portfolio Learning

LEARNING REPORT

• CHOOSE LEARNING REPORT when you need: to get a general or even a detailed view of the child’s learning, to know which learning areas have been focused on, to figure out which learning areas to focus on in the future months to guarantee a holistic and continuous learning
• Shows the progress in each learning area: how big percentage of all objectives has been covered within the chosen time period
• List view shows the evidence (photos, videos, notes) per each objective.
• Chart view gives percental and quantitative feedback on the learning objectives reached.

Are you already using Kindiedays?

Here are specific instructions on how to download portfolios through Kindiedays:

First, login to your manager account via https://app-prod.kindiedays.com/login.

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of child’s work that makes learning visible - shows the child's efforts, progress and achievements.

Portfolio must include the child’s participation in selecting content and reflecting on it. Therefore, portfolios have the potential of revealing a lot of their creators – the children: the ways the children think and learn as well as assessment and instruction.

Kindiedays Porfolio Learning

There is no one answer what a portfolio truly is. Portfolios are as varied as the children in early education centres and schools.

Read further to find out the portfolio guidelines by Paulson, Paulson & Meyer.

A portfolio must have:

1. Content that shows the child’s thoughts, ideas and self-reflection.
2. Child's touch. The portfolio is done with the children, not for the children. Portfolio assessment offers children an opportunity to learn to value their own work and themselves as learners.
3. A purpose - at least one of them is universal: Porfolio should show progress on the learning goals that are presented in the curriculum.
4. Information that illustrates growth.