Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children (2nd Edition)

Creating an Audit Trail

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On this page, you will find examples of how audit trails have been used in different settings.  You can also find out more about audit trails in Chapter 2 of Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children.

What Is an Audit Trail?

An audit trail is a visible articulation of learning over time.  Instances of learning are captured and represented through the use of various artifacts including photographs, drawings, writing, and book covers.  It is a powerful tool for

• Showing the children’s in-process thinking over time
• Generating topics for study
• Constructing meaning
• Circulating meaning

An audit trail is meant to be visible not only to the people in a classroom community but to others in the school community as well. This public visibility makes the audit trail a participatory site for becoming involved in the children’s learning. Students and teachers research their world together and produce representations of that research, in the form of an audit trail displayed on a bulletin board, or other surface, covered with various artifacts of learning. Throughout the year, previous learning events can be revisited using the artifacts as trigger images that serve as reminders of work done and the learning that has taken place.

Examples of Audit Trails

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Audit Trails and Adult Learners
Web 2.0 Audit Trails
By: Minda Morren Lopez

Context
University preservice (undergraduate) courses in literacy. The two courses were field-based courses for juniors and seniors that integrate literacy theory and methods with an internship in a classroom. The university courses are taught on a public elementary school campus twice a week, and our preservice teachers intern in a classroom twice a week. This is typically the course sequence before the student teaching semester (but not always).

Description
Students were asked to create their own audit trails using Web 2.0 technologies. We had some difficulties with the initial sites (www.dipity.com or www.capzles.com), so all students migrated their work over to Prezi.

Here is the assignment description from the syllabus:

Audit Trail
This semester we will use audit trails to keep track of our learning. Each of you will create your own audit trail online (choose from several options for creating the audit trail), and we will also create a whole-class audit trail. We will share our audit trails periodically in class, and there will be “checkpoints” throughout the semester—dates where you need to have a certain number of entries.

Here are some examples:
http://prezi.com/xwd4pry6iyxn/blazier-block/
http://prezi.com/np-sgzk7jcgd/my-journey/
http://prezi.com/xutkyuo7br0b/abys-audit-trail/?kw=view-xutkyuo7br0b&rc=ref-32675905

How Students Chose Artifacts
It was entirely up to them. I tried to guide them by telling them to choose a-ha moments that they had while reading and/or interacting with students and teachers at the school. I also encouraged them to think and reflect on learning they thought would impact them the most as future teachers.

What Impact the Audit Trail Made
I think the audit trails helped the students think about more specific learning experiences and reflect more about what they were learning in the classes and their intern experiences. I also think it helped to connect students to each other and create more of a community.

Audit Trails in Elementary School Settings

Calendar-Based Learning Trail
By: Faige Meller

I am a kindergarten teacher at an Independent co-educational day school in West Hollywood. We have approximately 540 students, Early Childhood (Toddlers) through 6th Grade. We are a socio-economically and culturally diverse population (49% students of color, 16% of students receive financial aid). Our faculty works in a team-teaching model: each elementary classroom has two master credentialed teachers.

After learning about the audit trail in your book “Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children,” I thought it would be a wonderful way for my students to reflect on their learning throughout the year. Each month we added interesting pictures to the “Learning Trail” and had discussions about events and themes presented. For example, when learning about our Olympic Countries, artifacts pertaining to each country were displayed and then photographed for our trail. Evidence of the children working, from building cities with blocks to creating art in outdoor spaces or participating in the Halloween Parade, was documented in photographs for the audit trail. In June, as we looked forward to our Kindergarten Graduation, the children had many opportunities to look at their “Learning Trail” and review with each other and the teachers the salient and exciting experiences in their kindergarten year. This helped them recall some of their favorite memories. Throughout the year, when you entered our room, you would often find a teacher taking pictures of enthusiastic kindergarten children wanting to be captured with their cherished work. In that way our trail expanded in the direction that the class chose; it was one that I had not anticipated but that was truly meaningful. This was authentic learning propelled by my “kinders!” All of this was contained on one bulletin board. Next year holds further promise of a “Learning (audit) Trail” inspired by the children’s wonders, interests and design of their own learning.

Hopefully, this gives you some idea of how I used the “Audit Trail” with my kindergarten children.

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