Documentation Examples > Examples of documentation shared back with learners

"The discussion and written work that followed this use of documentation was much more sophisticated and complex than the discussion that had proceeded it. Later, in small groups, the students were able to relate these ideas about human dignity to the actions and behaviors of some of the characters they were studying in the novel, The Lord of the Flies. So we had made these multiple moves--we started with the whole class discussion, then had individual thinking time, then there was some documentation of that thinking with teacher interpretation, then back to some reflection as a large group, then back to small groups--all these movements."

"The final papers for this project were the best that I had ever received from a class. Everyone had found a topic that they really cared about. They made deep and varied connections between their characters and either historical events or systems of government or social behavior or human psychology. For example, students saw the character of Piggy as representing everything from the social outcast to the super ego to Jews in Nazi Germany to the human intellect to J. Robert Oppenheimer in the Manhatten Project."

"Better yet, they supported their claims with evidence from the text and with research and did just a beautiful job. So I felt that I had found the right questions and that I had done this by listening to my students about what really mattered to them about the novel and the characters. But I had the sense that they would not have formed the concerns or interests--and ultimately the conceptions and understandings--that they had without listening to each other in the small groups and the large group. Finding out how other people viewed the characters in the novel helped to fill in missing information for them, but also it gave them perspectives and interpretations to try out and push against."