Tracking and Supporting Student Learning with Kidwatching

In the simplest explanation, kidwatching is exactly what it sounds like: watching kids as they read, write, collaborate, and participate in class. It is not formal assessment, but a series of anecdotes of student development that you share with families and administrators to provide concrete evidence of the kinds of student learning that traditional testing and reporting can have difficulty capturing. Try these strategies to use kidwatching in your classroom:

• Take advantage of a variety of ways to observe students. Do not limit your kidwatching to what you see and can write down during a class session. Look at all the artifacts you have access to. Class documents, reading and writing samples, K-W-L Charts, Exit Slips, and even video or audio recordings can help you identify how students are learning.
• Think carefully about who you observe when. You do not need to observe every student at length every day. Simply find a method that will fit within the structures of what you're doing in the class and make it a habit.
• Choose a simple notetaking system. You can make a seating chart or a two-column list with students’ names on one side and space to record notes on the other. Some teachers arrange sticky notes on a clipboard, with one note for each student. After recording their observations, they sort the sticky notes into student folders. Simple rubrics and check sheets, like this Editing Checklist for Self- and Peer Editing, can also be part of your notetaking system. Recognize that the best format may change depending upon the activities that you’re observing. Keep your system simple and flexible.
• Record basic information for every kidwatching episode so that you can notice students’ cognitive development over time. At a minimum, record student name, the date, the time of day, and, if relevant, the kind of activity students are working on. These details will allow you to arrange observations sequentially so that you can look for signs of growth.
• Choose guiding questions to move beyond simply being aware of whether students are “on task” to paying attention to how they are accomplishing the task. If students are taking a test, for instance, your guiding question might be “Does student performance demonstrate rote knowledge, a guess based on the available information, a random choice, or knowledge found through testing and exploring?” This guiding question would lead you to note who is quickly speeding through the questions and who is just staring at the test. You would notice who was looking at the word wall, who scribbles notes on scratch paper, and who seems to be daydreaming. Your guiding question should help you identify what to look for as you observe students at work.
• Use your kidwatching observations to plan activities. Examine your notes and other artifacts to see how students engage in learning then apply your findings to future class sessions and units. Observations alone can be useful; but what makes kidwatching a particularly strong tool is the step that teachers take to move beyond observations to analysis and curriculum building based on those observations.

Rather than tracking what students know or can do, kidwatching is a valuable assessment tool because it focuses on how students make meaning and learn new skills. By paying attention to how students learn, kidwatching gives teachers the information to differentiate instruction and plan classroom activities that fit the specific needs of their students.