More on anecdotal notes

Anecdotal notes, as I mentioned last week, provide an opportunity to document the students' learning and understanding. This helps us make decisions in our teaching and guides our next steps. So how do we check for understanding, resulting in quality anecdotal notes and more informed teaching? Fisher and Frey suggests that teachers use a variety of ways to check for understanding.

• Oral language- In reading, this may be through retelling, summarizing, or sharing their thinking that results from reading. 
• Questioning-teachers ask questions.  However, the art of teaching, according to Fisher and Frey is in asking deep, diverse, and engaging questions. When questioning, Fisher and Frey, tell us that we need to say the right thing for the child to do the right thing.  In questioning, we need to scaffold our questioning based on the needs of the student. 
• Student questioning-Keep in mind, questioning can be from the students. Observing the questions that students ask can provide deep insight to their understanding. 
• Writing
• Projects and tests

Anecdotal notes can be very helpful in documenting oral language, as well as questions that come from the students and teachers.  While writing, projects and tests provide more concrete evidence, observations of their behaviors during those tasks can be extremely beneficial, as well as anecdotal notes on the strengths and weakness of the tasks completed.  

Continue to incorporate anecdotal note taking as part of your everyday instruction.  We know and we tell our students that practicing something makes us better.  Your anecdotal notes will improve and will provide you more information the more you practice.