Session Three, Section Two

Anecdotal Records

What Are Anecdotal Records?

Anecdotal records describe what children do and say. These can also be called running, descriptive, or narrative records. Educators should write these using objective language and without judgment.

One example is to write “Autumn ran up to her friend and gave her a hug” instead of “Autumn was excited when she saw her friend.”

This next video is called video Anecdotal Records. This video is 3 minutes, 36 seconds long. As you watch, listen and watch for how educators use anecdotal records and their methods for taking them.

Consider:

What are your approaches to writing anecdotal record?.
What are some successful strategies for using anecdotal records?

Essential Elements

Essential elements for anecdotal records are:

Child’s name
Date
What the child said and did, especially connected to a particular skill
What adult or peer help the child needed
Where the child was
Who the child was with
Possible next steps

Without the information in the first two bullets, the notes can be useless. At a later point, educators often can’t accurately remember the details or fill in missing information.

Educators should record the information in a factual way and note any help the child received from others so that they know exactly what the child was able to do. Noting the child’s actual words or vocalizations is helpful.

The additional information describing the child’s location and who else was with the child may be useful for many reasons. As one educator mentioned in the video Anecdotal Records, educators may be able to use narrative records to learn about a child in many areas, such as how many times he is alone versus with other children.

Although educators can look through records at a later point to plan next steps, writing any thoughts about these that occur during the observation will help them plan easily while the child’s actions and abilities are fresh in their minds. For instance, if a child has learned to write the first letter of their name, an educator could add to their anecdotal records a plan to teach other letters of their name next.

Consider this note, written on a sticky note to be transferred to a child’s records. What additional information would be helpful for an educator to effectively use this information?

Example note with the text Damon knows his numbers 1 to 10

What additional information would be helpful for an educator to effectively use this information? (click here to reveal)

Some possible answers include:

The date
The activity the child was doing, e.g. counting how many toy animals are in the zoo he built
Adults or peers with him
Any level of help needed, e.g., the educator pointed to each animal while the child counted
More detail about what the child did, e.g. the child lined up the animals in a row

This note leaves questions about the child’s abilities, such as:

Does Damon know the written numerals?
Can he count in order? Or does he recognize numbers individually?
Does he know the quantities associated with each numeral?
Does he recognize the numerals when they are out of order?
Can he write the numerals?

Complete example anecdotal record with date, time, setting, curriculum area, and observer

This is a more complete example of information that would be helpful on an anecdotal record.