Discuss the importance of documentation to teaching and to a child's learning

Discuss the importance of documentation to teaching and to a child's learning. What are the challenges of documentation to the classroom teacher? What are some strategies that would help address these challenges?

Documentation is important to teaching and to the learning of children because it helps to reinforce the ideas and objectives of the teacher. Documentation also shows valuable information about the progress of the children, which could otherwise be lost in the larger classroom setting. Documentation allows for children to become better listeners who are more in tune with their students.

The challenges to documentation for the teacher involve one teacher trying to monitor and take note of the behaviour and development of group of students that outnumbers them significantly. It is impossible for the teacher to monitor the entire class at once. To aid in the documentation of the entire class the teacher could implement a number of strategies. They could utilize parents and classroom assistants to monitor the children and help with documentation to ensure no aspect of learning and development is overlooked. This will also help in overcoming another obstacle, which is the challenge of distraction from teaching that can arise from documentation distracting you from your focus to teach.

What were the benefits of the peer teaching events? How would you incorporate peer teaching in an elementary classroom?

There are many benefits to peer teaching. It enables us to enhance our teaching skills and practice in a safe and constructive environment. It allowed us to experiment and to learn from our mistakes and take growth from it. As the students in the exercise we got new and interesting views into how the lessons worked and saw new ways to improve and grow with them. It also allows for brainstorming and cooperation resulting in the best lessons possible.

To incorporate peer teaching into an elementary school classroom in many ways. In the younger grades like k-2 I would have the children “teach” by having them share what they had created and explaining their procedure. This way the students would learn from what their classmates did and gain new perspective on the class projects. In older classes 3-6 I would assign small projects to the class and in small groups they will teach each other different lessons. This could be integrated into almost any subject. This will give the students experience in sharing and communicating with their classmates while also instilling confidence and creativity n how they present and develop their projects to their individual interests and abilities. The students will be able to learn like we did and also enjoy learning in a non-traditional setting that gives them more freedom then they may normally enjoy.