Documentation Examples > Documentation Exhibition

To me, very. They kept me anchored and on point. I didn't do a very good job of keeping them in the consciousness of my students, but I think I can honestly say that every moment in class was used in the service of one or more of those UGs and I feel that my students met all of the goals to a greater or lesser extent.

Joan:

Jen's work as classroom teacher ultimately revolved around the understanding goals she established for her students, whether or not she articulated those goals repeatedly to her students as a matter of Teaching for Understanding instructional practice. Her own focus on them and her conviction of their importance made her a mindful and purposeful gardener - one who transplanted, weeded, seeded, watered, and tilled diligently and strategically in order to be ready for her community's upcoming garden tour (in our case, the end of the school year). I suspect the learning experiences she designed around those goals, accompanied as they often were by formal, designated times for reflection, allowed her students to connect their learning to those goals, even if they did not refer to them specifically.

For a while, Jen and I have been wondering about the ways in which Teaching for Understanding and Making Learning Visible, both ideas developed and researched at Project Zero, can support each other. We are most grateful for the data sets that MLV documentation practices afford in connection with desired unit understandings; we are also appreciative of how documentation allows us to know our students as people with individual learning preferences, cognitive strengths and weaknesses, prior knowledge bases, interpersonal skills, and social/emotional needs. Teaching for Understanding works best for students when the instruction, performances, and assessment approaches created in conjunction with it reflect an attention to this kind of information about students.