Child notes demonstrate the planning cycle and encourage reflective, intentional practice by enabling stories/documentation to be linked to goals, opportunities, milestones, aspirations or 'where to from here' statements. This can evidence the implementation of specific goals/ideas in both a formative and summative way.
Within a child note, stories can also be linked together, enabling continuity and observation of the learning journey. This provides educators with another way of observing, analysing and supporting children's progression over time.
Here are a few different ways you could use child notes:
Link a new note or story to an original observation.
Show how you plan to support a child’s particular interests and development.
Create regular goals with parents and show the child’s progression on each goal through individually documented stories over time.
Link the parents voice and feedback to observations and stories.
Track progress and note potential next steps on a child's learning journey.
Observe the progression of your room or group of children.
Gather information from different places (group stories, previous stories, child notes) and link them together.
Who can see child notes?
Child notes are private between that child’s family Admin/s (usually a child's parents) and the teachers at an early learning centre. Unlike stories, they are not visible to any other invited family members, and will only appear on a child’s ‘Child notes’ page.
A child's notes area is found on each child's profile and can include text, attached documents, embedded video, embedded images, links to stories, links to notes, and comments.
You can add categories to notes to allow easy filtering of different note types. All services start with a base set of categories but you can then edit and add your own categories. You could, for example change the 'Goal' category to 'Aspirations'.
📝 Other articles you may be interested in:
Create a child note
Edit or delete a child note
Child note categories (for educators)
Linking stories and child notes (for educators)
View child notes on the Storypark for Families app (for families)