Setting up Reflections

[Jules]

 

This tutorial talks you through how to set up Reflections on your Tapestry package. 

Reflective practice ensures educators are always learning. Tapestry Reflections allows you to gather your thoughts, information, research and observations and to record the journey you are taking with your setting, your children and their families. You can make notes, link reflections and observations together and organise your reflections with 'flags'. 

We'll start by looking at how to enable the Reflections feature. To skip to the section on enabling flag sets to use with Reflections, click here.

 

Setting up Reflections

To enable Reflections, you will need to be set up as a manager. You can then click on your name in the top right-hand corner (1) and select 'Control Panel' from the drop-down menu (2).

 

 

From here select 'Settings' (1) on the left-hand menu and then 'Reflections' (2). On this page you will see the option to 'Enable Reflections' (3). Tick this box and the Reflections tab will then be available at the top of your Tapestry screen. . 

Make sure you save any changes using the blue 'Save' button (4).

This page also provides a link to the Flags settings (5), which you can use to mark your reflections with. This allows you to search for reflections with particular flags. You can decide which flags you would like to have enabled from this link or by going to the Flags section on the Control Panel (6).  You can read a bit more about setting up Flags in the next part of this tutorial. 

 

 

 

Enabling Flag sets

Tapestry offers a choice of pre-set flags for organising your reflections. This allows you to search for your reflections by flag type and identify common themes or collect evidence for a project, research, or for an inspection. For more information on using flags, you can find our tutorial on enabling and using flags here.

Once you are on the Flags Settings page (1), you should see a list of flag sets and whether they are enabled for either observations or reflections (2). To view the individual flags in a flag set, click 'View flags' (3).

 

 

You should then see a preview of the flags in that flag set.

 

 

To enable a flag set for reflections click the 'Configure' button (1), then tick the 'Enabled' box for reflections (2) and click 'Save' (3). 

 

 

You can also quickly enable all flags in a section, using the enable all button. This will enable those flags for both reflections and observations.

 

 

User Permissions

You may also want to think about what you would like staff to be able to do and see on Reflections, for example you can enable them to edit reflections or you can allow them to delete and restore reflections. This tutorial talks you through how to set permissions for staff. 

 

So now you're all set up! Happy reflecting! 

You can read more about Reflective Practice in our article on the FSF.

 

 

 

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