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| Overview: |
This workshop invites educators to consider listening as the key value that guides pedagogical documentation. Together, we will explore how documentation can (re)generate practice by revealing children’s meaning-making processes and informing how we support their inquiries.
Grounded in both reflection and practicality, the sessions offer strategies, formats and systems that make documentation purposeful, joyful and sustainable rather than overwhelming. Participants will encounter diverse ways of documenting, adapt these approaches to the realities of their own classrooms and design systems that balance structure with flexibility, ensuring that documentation remains a living, relational practice that continues to evolve alongside children and educators. |
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| Outcomes: |
- Deepen awareness of documentation as an act of relational pedagogy, rooted in curiosity, intentionality and viewing children as meaning makers.
- Identify areas for improvement or new approaches to pedagogical documentation.
- Develop strategies for creating documentation pieces that honor children’s creativity and thinking processes.
- Create a documentation system, adapted to individual classroom needs (and within a team approach, coherence across the school).
- Develop criteria and strategies for evaluating the success of a documentation system.
- Develop concrete next steps for implementing and refining documentation practices, with a focus on alignment, structure and creativity.
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| Day 1: Documentation as a Pedagogical Value |
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Welcome and Introduction
- Overview of the workshop goals and outcomes
- Tuning in to each other and the big ideas of the workshop
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM | Session 1: What does documentation mean to you? What mindsets, strategies formats and systems do we want to use to orientate ourselves to the pedagogy we want?
10:30 AM - 10:45 AM | Break
10:45 AM - 12:00 PM | Session 2: What are we listening for? What do we want to capture? How do we use docuemntation to inform our planning?
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Lunch Break
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM | Session 3: What strategies and formats support documentation pratices?
- Evaluate the tools currently used and their effectiveness.
- Provide feedback on each other’s tools and strategies, focusing on what is working and what could be improved.
2:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Break
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM | Session 4: How can beauty and aesthetics be used as lenses in documentation?
- Discussion on the importance of creating aesthetically pleasing documentation that reflects children's individuality, vitality and creativity.
- Look at examples of documentation and analyse them with a checklist.
- Develop strategies for maintaining aesthetics while keeping documentation purposeful, meaningful and “time efficient”.
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| Day 2: Designing Systems and Measuring Effectiveness |
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM | Recap and Introduction to Day 2
- Review key learnings from Day 1
- Introduce the focus for Day 2: Systems for documentation (and record keeping) and evaluation strategies.
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM | Session 5: How can we design a system that offers both structure and flexibility?
- Discuss the benefits and challenges of using systems for documentation (e.g., consistency, clarity, adaptability).
- Create a draft of a documentation system, considering frequency and formats.
10:30 AM - 10:45 AM | Break
10:45 AM - 12:00 PM | Session 6: What is effective and how do we find out?
- Establish criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of strategies, formats and systems (e.g., online storage, accesibility, clarity, ease of use, impact on student learning).
- Discuss methods for collecting feedback from teachers, students and parents to assess the impact of documentation.
- Develop an action plan for gathering this feedback regularly.
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Lunch Break
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM | Session 7: What can we learn from others?
- Presentation on documentation practices in other international schools, focusing on what has worked and what has not.
- Group discussion: What can we learn from these practices and how can we adapt them to our context?
2:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Break
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM | Session 8: Action planning and reflection
- Reflect on the new strategies, formats and systems they’ve developed over the two days.
- In small groups, create an action plan to implement new documentation practices in their schools.
- Share and discuss action plans with the larger group for feedback and ideas.
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| Workshop Close: |
- Final reflections and Q & A
- Closing remarks
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| Potential Audience: |
| Early years educators and their leaders. |
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| About Anne Van Dam |
Anne van Dam is an experienced educator and educational consultant who is deeply passionate about the role of play in children's learning process. She believes in the power of documentation as a tool for educators to reflect on and grow in their practice by exploring the various threads, ideas, and connections that underpin children's investigations.
Throughout her career, Anne has held various roles in the field of education, including teacher, curriculum coordinator, head of school, and vice-principal. Her international experience includes working in schools located in China, Singapore, Switzerland, and The Netherlands.
Anne's passion for education and dedication to empowering educators and young learners led her to collaborate with the International Baccalaureate (IB) regional office in The Hague, where she worked with the PYP (Primary Years Programme) development team on the IB PYP review. Her focus areas during this collaboration included learner agency, early years education, inquiry-based learning, and aspects of creating a strong learning community.
Since 2015, Anne has been working as an independent educational consultant. Her primary goal is to support schools and educators in developing a shared pedagogy that recognizes and honors young children as incredible learners and meaning makers. |
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| Venue: |
Anglo American School of Sofia
Address: Панчарево, ul. "Siianie" 1, 1137 Sofia, Bulgaria
Phone: +359 2 923 8810
Hotel options close to the school:
- Intercontinental Sofia (IHG)
- Grami Hotel, Sofia
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| Timings: |
8.30 am to 3.30 pm
Registration at 8:00 am on the 24th April 2026 |
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| Investment |
USD 850 Closing Date 14th April 2026
USD 750 Early Bird Offer Till 1st February 2026
Includes: Certificate of Participation for 16 Professional Development Hours, Lunch and Coffee Breaks. |
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