Blog Post #2 "What is Kidwatching"-Kristen Duncan- PE

                Kidwatching is simply what we do each and every day in our classrooms.  We watch, we observe, we make decisions based on those observations, we are surprised, we are amazed, we are learning about our students each and every day just by watching.  Kidwatching is a tool that can help us as educators understand who our students are as learners.  Each one of them are unique and different in their own way and just by watching them we can learn those characteristics.  Kidwatching can be documents by anecdotal records, mental notes, field notes, or checklists.  By taking mental notes or writing down observations we can capture students in their “teachable moments” and learn how to better reach them.

                As educators we have a set curriculum that we must teach and make sure our kids know how to do by the end of the year.  But do we actually ever know their strengths, what they love, what makes them different from other kids in the class?  Kidwatching can help us know our kids personally and teach them more about things they love, instead of only teaching them what we are required to teach them.  We can find interests and let them know that we know what they like.  Choosing a book based on books of the same genre they have chosen before, shows that you are paying attention to what they like to read, not just making them read. 

                I believe one of the most important part of the “Kidwatching” study is the interacting with children.  Vygotsky describes a child’s zone of proximal development as a cognitive state in which he or she can do with an adult/peer even when he/she can’t do it alone.  By “kidwatching” you get the opportunities to see where children are having difficulties and are able to address those difficulties and help work them out, so next time the student doesn’t have the same difficulties.  By asking questions, making students think, developing their own philosophies, and challenging them beyond what they are thinking at the moment; you are helping them to develop concepts and ideas that they will not only use at this moment but later in life.  Taking the time to ask questions so the student has to think about the answer and the “why?” part of it, makes them take the extra step in their learning and gives the teacher insights into a child’s thinking and reasoning processes. 

                The first step of knowing and learning our students is observations.  They have patters of everything-from language to social natures.  Each child has their own unique way of doing things, all we need to do is watch and learn and in turn we will able to personally know our students and be able to relate to them on a level where they best understand what we are trying to teach them.