Photographing Children – Observations and Documentation

Hi all,

Observations and documentation are a regular, daily occurrence in the lives of teachers working with children. There are plenty of ways to go about it; learning stories, anecdotal records, running records, parent postcards and plenty of others. With all these different ways of approaching how to document your student’s experiences and progress, it’s easy to find one that works well for you, your classroom and your student’s parents however they all have one thing in common, photos.

Recently, I have seen a push towards more visual oriented observations. In an early childhood settings, these can be seen in display book portfolios, shown proudly on group display boards and handed out in the staff room for inspiration. The rationalisation is that parents are more likely to engage with these observations because they are quick to decipher; you simply need to look at the photo and the words are put into context. In a recent primary placement, the visual element to documentation was imperative; many of the families at the school were immigrants and refugees which made text heavy communication difficult due to language barriers.

So here it comes to the part of putting together the most important part of the observations, the photos. Photographing children doesn't seem too difficult but it is important for the photos to seem genuine and authentic. I typically use 3 types of shots that help to vary the types of photos you can include in your documentation…

Work in progress

I feel like this angle really lets the viewer see what the child is doing and the focus is on their action, preferably the one you are documenting. It works for a range of activities and actions and doesn’t distract the child from their task.  

 Birds eye view

These photos are great if you want to capture a play setup, piece of art or group interaction. The frame is filled up with the play the children are engaged with and often, their interactions with each other.  

 From my perspective

In this photo, you are seeing exactly what the child is seeing and what they are choosing to do with the materials in front of them. This shot is great for documenting the journey from blank slate to finished product, capturing the child’s process in between.

So long as the photos you choose to capture are focused on the child and their play, there is no wrong way to photograph children. Not only do these shots capture the essential but they can also be tweaked so that the photos are non-identifiable, in order to be shared in the public forum.

Happy snapping!  

Miss Tracy xx

Watch this Space!

Hello again readers,

If you’re still with me, you can’t have missed the fact that I have been extremely absent over the last 4 months. While I love maintaining and contributing to this blog, real life tends to get in the way and I was finding it incredibly difficult to keep up with my post schedule. Rather than put you through the trouble of reading incomplete and under developed posts and anecdotes, I decided to take a break.

During those 4 months I did get up to many different things. I took on more tutoring students, mainly aged 11-14 in grades 5-8 and took on more shifts and my part time job with Kumon Australia. My course requirements last semester seemed to get bigger and bigger and the assignments began to get more spaced out and weighted heavily on my final grades. After undertaking my first mathematics unit, I have a new appreciation for what is expected of students and am yet to see a more intense problem book then what I had to submit at the end of semester.

A new addition to my semester was a Community Engagement experience. This is another placement unit where we were expected to dedicate our time to the community, as outlined by this paragraph supplied by ACU…

“Pre-Service Teachers are required to complete a Community Engagement Program (CEP) comprising 10 days or 70 hours in an approved community placement.  The experiences gained should enable the Pre-Service Teachers to work collaboratively with community groups and organisations to achieve mutually agreed goals that build capacity, improve well-being and produce just and sustainable outcomes in the interests of people and communities. An aim of the CEP is to expose the Pre-Service Teachers to diverse contexts that will promote critical reflection about their values and beliefs and provide opportunities for them to contribute to the life of the community.”

I can honestly state, without a doubt, that this placement was life altering. I chose to complete my CE in a primary school located in a low income area, heavily populated by refugees from Sudan and Vietnam. For 5 hours once a week, I worked as a teacher’s aide with the ICT and library department. The amount of support and recognition I received while in this position by the students, staff and wider community was beyond expectation.  The teacher’s saw beyond my volunteer title and found ways to integrate me into the daily classes, to help with assessments and even teach some classes. While in the library, I had the opportunity to learn about the preparation and cataloging system, how books are selecting and used in classes and the importance of weeding out books.

Towards the end of the term, I worked with the principal and key support staff to develop an inaugural ‘Transition to Prep’ for the school, which looked at how we could develop some key social skills in the children before they started school. After continuous and ongoing planning and some bumps in the road, the program went ahead. While it had a shaky start, by the end of the two months, the change in these children was astonishing. They were getting along with their new friends, learning how to express themselves and their emotions in healthier ways and developing a relationship with the wider community which would become their school this year.

This and my time as an aide have left me with a range of new skills and attitudes towards education and working with children, which I doubt I would have developed on a regular placement. Once placement and the semester came to an end, things outside of uni became to get hectic. With the holidays upon me, my schedule was packed and there was so much to do leading up the Christmas and my uni break. Fast forward to February and here we are!

So here I will leave you with the promise to return regularly, once a week, with a well written and relevant posts relating to my journey studying education and learning to become an educator. Until next time,

Miss Tracy xx