10 ideas to include in your EYFS Learning Journey

A child’s learning Journey is a collection of evidence showing their progression through the EYFS. Throughout their time at nursery evidence is collated by practitioners and documented inside either a folder or a booklet. Learning journeys are a fantastic opportunity for children to look back through their book and reflect on what they were doing at the time. The amount of language and conversations that are exchanged from these occasions are vast, children feel a sense of achievement and proud of sharing these moments with loved ones.

Learning Journeys are a working progressing and each and everyone are different and the ways in which these are designed and constructed vary from setting to setting. It is mainly the child’s Key person whom has responsibility to complete them.

10 simple ideas to help gather evidence for children’s Learning Journeys.

1. Speech Bubble – Have pre cut out speech bubbles to record what they child says, these will help support observations and is a fantastic tool to assess the child’s language development.
2. Add photographs- Photographs will support observations, these will personalise the Learning Journey
3. Wow moments- Use a wow moment template for parents to complete, have these readily available for parents to record their child’s achievements.
4. Create an All About Me template/section- These are best completed when a child’s starts nursery by the parent and it is best practice to repeat this when a child moves to another room.
5. Create an At Home section-Encourage parents to bring in items from home eg photos of family or pets, or days out any artwork from home. Encourage parents to add their comments to these pieces of evidence as these can be added to the child’s Learning Journey.
6. Post it notes-Use these to record spontaneous observations. Don’t worry about rewriting the post it notes just stick them straight in the child’s Learning Journey.
7. Samples of the children’s work-Real samples of children’s work provides a breadth of evidence to support observations.
8. Involve children- Let the children decorate their Learning Journey and help put it together, this will help them develop an ownership of their Learning Journey
9. Document evidence of the child’s first day, last day at nursery-Create a template to record children’s’ first or last day at nursery.This may include a photo or a piece of artwork.
10. Next steps gallery-Add photos or observations to demonstrate that each next step of learning has been achieved.

Learning Journeys are a collection of documents collected by  practitioners. Evidence is documentation to determine the child’s level of progress.