Making Time to Observe and Reflect
Observation and documentation help educators know where children are and support their continued learning. As teachers observe during small-group time, they can gain valuable insights into children’ s thinking, skills, and interactions.
Educators can assess literacy learning by writing anecdotal notes, using targeted checklists, and making brief audio or video recordings to review later. Taking photographs is also a great option: These can capture a child’ s creative process or finished product to show what they learned.
Educators can use their observations and assessments to plan future small-group instruction, tailored to each child’ s specific strengths and growth areas. For example, an educator leading a discussion about Lubna and Pebble might notice a child who is confidently using simple words( happy, sad) to describe characters’ feelings. In subsequent small-group sessions, the educator could plan an activity focused on introducing more descriptive terms( lonely, hopeful, relieved), then guide a conversation about how a character’ s feelings change throughout the story.( See“ Connections to Social and Emotional Learning During Small-Group Literacy Experiences” for more about literacy and the social and emotional domain.)
Educating Young Children Vol 1 No 4 Winter 2026
NAEYC. org / EYC