Important: Always make sure that you gather information in a way that ensures the information remains confidential. Never leave your notes where children or the family members of children could read them.
Anecdotal Notes—Specific Time
Detailed records of a child’s activity taken during a specially designated time frame can help child care providers describe a problem, discover a difficulty, or pinpoint disruptions in a room. This type of record keeps track of everything that happens to the child in the room during a specific period of time. These records are useful when child care providers are trying to accurately describe a difficulty a child is having by providing all the details of the child’s activities.
Anecdotal Notes—Regular Intervals
When child care providers want to know how often a particular behaviour is or isn’t occurring, they can observe a child at regular intervals (e.g., every 30 minutes) throughout the day. During these observation times, child care providers write down how many times they do or do not see the behaviour. If this regular observation is repeated for a week or so, the child care provider can accurately establish a sampling of the behaviour being observed.