Floor Books: A teacher's guide
Discover the power of Floor Books in enhancing and evaluating children's learning experiences – a dynamic, interactive approach to education.
What are Floor Books?
Floor books are large, accessible scrapbooks used in primary classrooms to capture and document children’s thinking, questions, and learning experiences. Designed to be placed on the floor for easy access, they invite learners to engage collaboratively in the process of meaning-making and reflection. More than just a record of classroom activity, a floor book becomes a living document that evolves with the children’s interests and contributions.
This approach is grounded in child-centred pedagogy, where the direction of learning is shaped by the learners themselves. Teachers act as facilitators, encouraging learners to contribute drawings, comments, photographs, and writing to capture their ideas and inquiries. In doing so, children develop key thinking skills such as reasoning, recalling, and building on others’ ideas, all within a shared physical space.
Floor books also encourage shared ownership of learning. Rather than focusing solely on individual outcomes, they reflect the collective journey of a group, showcasing moments of exploration, discovery, and collaboration. As children revisit the book, they engage in dialogue with prior learning—whether their own or that of their peers—building deeper understanding and making connections across time and experiences.
Though often associated with early years education, floor books are increasingly used across a range of primary settings to support oracy, reflection, and conceptual development. They serve not only as a formative assessment tool but also as a catalyst for learner agency.
Key Takeaways:
- Collaborative Thinking: Floor books support shared reasoning and capture learner-led inquiry.
- Visible Learning Journeys: They provide a tangible, evolving record of classroom experiences.
- Reflective Practice: Learners revisit and extend previous ideas, deepening their understanding over time.
Keeping floor books updated
Updating the floor book after engaging learners in discussion or reflection is an essential part of making learning visible and meaningful. When their voices are acknowledged and recorded, learners begin to see themselves as active participants in shaping their own educational journey. This small but significant act reinforces that their thoughts, questions, and ideas matter.
A floor book that reflects recent conversations shows that the classroom is responsive—adapting to the learners' evolving interests and thinking. It sends a strong message that learning is not static, and neither is their contribution. This encourages a sense of ownership, helping learners to see how their ideas can influence what happens next in their classroom.
Beyond curriculum planning, this process fosters key social and emotional skills. By seeing their ideas captured and revisited, learners develop greater confidence in expressing themselves. They begin to understand that their contributions can lead to new learning opportunities—not just for themselves, but for the whole group.
Including learner input also supports inclusive practice. It ensures that a diverse range of perspectives is valued, reinforcing the idea that everyone’s voice matters.
What Are the Key Features of a Floor Book?
A well-structured floor book serves as both a thinking space and a living document of classroom learning. It captures the evolving ideas, questions, and reflections of learners, forming a visual record of their journey through a topic or inquiry. These books are more than simple scrapbooks—they are tools that support dialogue, deepen learning, and connect children’s contributions to ongoing curriculum planning.
An important feature of the floor book is its openness: learners are encouraged to record their thinking through drawings, writing, photos, or verbal contributions scribed by adults. This creates a shared space for collaborative meaning-making, accessible to all learners regardless of literacy level.
Rather than being used as an assessment tool, open-ended questions appear throughout the book to provoke thinking and stimulate curiosity. These questions help develop higher-order thinking by encouraging learners to reflect, compare, predict, and connect ideas.
Floor books are typically large in size to allow children to sit around them, encouraging group discussions and joint attention. As the pages grow, so too does the depth of learning. Teachers can track the progression of ideas over time, identifying how learners revisit and build upon earlier concepts.
At its core, the floor book is a shared record of exploration—holding the voices of both children and adults as they construct knowledge together.
Key Features of a Floor Book:
- Child-Led Content: Includes learners’ questions, ideas, photos, drawings, and reflections in their own words or images.
- Open-Ended Inquiry: Uses prompts and questions to spark deeper thinking and discussion, not test prior knowledge.
- Collaborative Progression: Documents shared learning experiences over time, helping learners see how their thinking grows and connects.
What Is the Role of the Teacher in Using a Floor Book?
The teacher plays a vital role in guiding and shaping how the floor book is used in the classroom. While the content is generated by learners, it is the teacher’s role to act as a listener, facilitator, and thoughtful documenter of children's thinking. Through careful observation and dialogue, the teacher captures the ideas, questions, and reflections that emerge during shared activities and discussions.
Using the floor book effectively requires a balance between child-led exploration and intentional teaching. Teachers introduce new provocations and experiences that respond to the children’s interests while gently steering the learning in line with curriculum goals. This means creating space for learners to express themselves freely while also identifying opportunities to deepen understanding or connect ideas across contexts.
During floor book sessions, teachers help learners revisit earlier ideas, extend their thinking, and reflect on how their understanding has evolved. They may model how to express a thought clearly, pose a new question, or offer vocabulary that helps clarify meaning. These subtle forms of support ensure that the floor book process remains rich, inclusive, and focused.
Ultimately, the teacher’s role is to weave together the children's voices and the curriculum through a shared visual dialogue—one that evolves page by page and builds towards meaningful learning.
Key Elements of the Teacher's Role:
- Active Listener and Documenter: Capture children's words, questions, and actions with accuracy and respect.
- Facilitator of Dialogue: Support group conversations, encourage collaboration, and introduce new provocations as needed.
- Connector of Ideas and Curriculum: Help bridge learner interests with broader educational goals through intentional guidance.
Practical Steps for Using Floor Books in the Classroom
The floor book approach provides a powerful method for capturing learners' thinking, promoting curiosity, and embedding pupil voice at the heart of the learning process. More than a record of activity, a floor book document becomes a shared space for enquiry, dialogue, and discovery. Whether you’re new to the concept or refining your current practice, the following five strategies offer practical guidance for using children's floor books meaningfully in your classroom.
1. Choose the Right Materials and Setup
Start with a square floorbook made from white cartridge paper—the high-quality paper allows for rich illustrations, photographs, sticky notes, and written annotations. Position your floor standing book shelf in an accessible space so learners can revisit and contribute at any time. This signals that the floor book journey is shared and ongoing.
2. Connect with Previous Learning
Use floor books to document previous learning and connect new topics with what learners already know. This not only strengthens understanding but models how knowledge builds over time. Add dated pages or visual timelines to show progression. Re-visiting earlier pages can also help learners reflect, spot changes in thinking, and evaluate their growth.
3. Support Enquiry and Critical Thinking
Well-planned floor book activities should centre on enquiry skills. Use open-ended prompts such as "What do you wonder about...?" or "What questions do we have?" Encourage learners to make predictions, reflect on outcomes, and represent thinking through drawings, captions, or diagrams. The sharing of ideas among peers deepens collaborative learning and invites wider perspectives.
4. Involve Every Individual Child
Floor books work best when every voice is heard. Plan group sessions in small clusters and use scaffolds such as sentence starters or question prompts to support contributions. This inclusive approach ensures each individual child has their ideas recorded and valued, building confidence and ownership over their learning.
5. Celebrate Progress with Beautiful Books
The goal is not perfection, but authentic learning. However, making your beautiful book visually engaging supports pride and engagement. Use mixed media—drawings, photos, sticky notes—and highlight key learning moments. Share your floor books during assemblies, parent events, or displays. Seeing their thinking valued helps learners understand the impact of their voices.
Research and Reading on Floor Books
While floor books themselves are not yet a highly researched area, the wider concept of learning journals and collaborative documentation in the classroom is well documented. Learning journals—whether individual or group-based—share many of the same characteristics as floor books: they capture pupil voice, promote metacognition, and support co-construction of learning. The following studies highlight the impact of learning journals and reflective documentation practices on engagement, language development, and deeper thinking in early and primary education settings.
1. Duncanson, E. (2014). Lasting effects of creating classroom space: A study of teacher behavior. Educational Planning, 21, 29–40.
This study explores how rearranging classroom environments to support open, collaborative workspaces positively impacts student engagement and autonomy. It discusses how tools like journals and shared documentation (similar in use to floor books) empower students to reflect on their learning, encouraging independence and deeper thinking.
2. Adhe, K., Masitha, K. D., & Widayati, S. (2020). The effectiveness of using the classroom guide book for early childhood education teachers. Jurnal Indria.
This paper evaluates the impact of a classroom guidebook designed to support flexible learning environments and reflective practice in early childhood education. It highlights the effectiveness of structured formats for capturing children’s thinking and planning learning pathways—similar to the way floor books or group journals operate in practice.
3. McNiff, J. (2007). My story is my living educational theory. Creative Approaches to Research.
McNiff discusses how reflective journaling supports teacher and student learning through narrative and inquiry. While more theoretical in focus, the study underlines the educational power of shared documentation practices and provides a strong foundation for understanding how tools like floor books enhance metacognitive skills.
4. Warwick, P., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2006). Using learning journals to foster reflective practice in primary science classrooms.
This study found that using journals in science lessons helped primary-aged children to verbalise their reasoning, connect ideas, and reflect more effectively on experimental outcomes. These benefits mirror those claimed in practice-based reports on floor book use, particularly around deepening understanding through shared, visual documentation.
5. Eick, C. J., & Dias, M. (2005). Building the authority of experience in communities of practice: The development of preservice teachers’ practical knowledge through learning journals. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 137–148.
Though focused on preservice teachers, this study provides valuable insights into how learning journals support reflective and dialogic learning. It shows how structured reflection can help learners track their development over time—a key goal in the use of classroom-based floor books and collaborative learning logs.