This year as I have been experiencing my first ever full implementation of a workshop approach, deciding exactly which system will work for me to record information about student conferences has been key. Many of the books I have read emphasized that each person has to decide what works best, as one person's ideas will not necessarily work for other people. This is so true, as I have gathered and tried ideas from teaching blogs and books. I have also noticed while one author explained how writing on labels was a disaster, another wrote about it being her perfect system corraborating the idea that I cannot just take someone else's system and expect it to be perfect for me.
While I am fairly new to a workshop approach, I am not new to anecdotal records. Even when I was teaching in a position with a mandated scripted reading program where I felt I could do little adjustments based on my observations of students as individuals, I kept anecdotal records. The system that worked for me at the time was to have a clipboard with a page with a table for each student to record observations. This year I first tried to have a binder as recommended by The Two Sisters, but I quickly realized a couple of problems trying to use this system. Even though I had a binder for each class, they were filling up quickly. Also, it was too bulky and hard to take to where students were. I ended up switching back to my trusty clipboard. However, I did not want to have four clipboards (one for each class in both reading and writing), so I decided to have reading notes on one side of the pages and writing notes on the back. I thought I was so clever as I just flipped the stack of papers over when it was writing time. However, some students' pages filled up quickly on one side while the other was still just getting started.
Nonetheless, none of these systems worked great for me. I considered using a notebook with a few pages dedicated to each student as I had seen others do. One of the great benefits of reading education books is that ideas usually pop into mind, even if it is not directly linked to something the author said. While I was reading Middle School Readers an idea came to mind to use a laptop. I am able to log on as myself on a student laptop to have access to my files. Last week while on break I took advantage of some time allotted to prepare for the rest of the year to set up my anecdotal records electronically.
I am excited for many reasons and think that I may have finally found my ideal system, even though I will still have to test it out to know for sure. Here are some reasons why I think it will work great:
*I teach in a dual immersion setting, and I need to pay close attention to literacy in two langauges. I did not want to have multiple clipboards for each class, but I also realized that it is nice to have notes separated by language. With a laptop, I can have a document for each language and easily navigate between the two.
*I will be able to record my notes much faster. Just as typing my reading response letter replies on the computer has been an excellent timesaver, electronic notes should also help me make the best of the valuable amount of time that I can spend conferring with students.
*I gain valuable insights from students through multiple avenues. An electronic system of notes will facilitate keeping track of different sources of observations in one location.
I realized that this post was getting way to long, so check back tomorrow to see my example document with an explanation of how I will use it.
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