Jules Posted September 26, 2019 Posted September 26, 2019 To begin with you will need to enable Reflections on your Tapestry account. This tutorial talks you through how to do that. Now you're ready to start adding reflections! There are a number of steps and thing you may choose to add when creating a reflection, which we will go through in depth. To skip to a particular section within this tutorial, please use the links below. A New Reflection Linking children to your Reflection Linking Observations and other Reflections Adding Media Flagging your Reflection Impact A New Reflection You can add a new reflection from the 'Reflections' tab (1) and then click on the blue 'Add Reflection' button (2). From here you can create your reflection. You can enter a title (1) and then write your reflection (2). This space can include your thoughts and why you are thinking them, what you plan to do in response to your reflection and any theoretical perspective you may wish to include. In this box you can also add any hashtags (3) you use in your setting for filtering and sorting purposes later (to learn more about the tagging system please see this tutorial). You can use your own hashtags alongside the Flags to organise your reflections and search for those with the same theme. The date for the reflection (4) will be filled in automatically with the current date/time, but you can edit it from here. You can choose the visibility of your reflection (5): Visible to Author and Managers - this is the default setting. It means that the person who is writing the reflection and all managers on your Tapestry package will be able to view the reflection. Remember, managers can view, edit and comment on all reflections. Visible to Author and All Staff - this means that the person who is writing the reflection and all other staff members (including managers) will be able to view this reflection, edit it and comment on it, joining in the reflective process. The exception to this is if the reflection has no children attached and the user permission 'Add or edit reflections that do not relate to children' has been marked as 'not permitted' - this would mean not all staff could edit the reflection. You can read more about user permissions here. Awaiting Deletion - if you select this option, once saved, a red banner will appear telling you how many days there are left until the reflection is deleted. During this period you have the opportunity to restore the deleted reflection. You can read more about this here. You can also choose the status of your reflection (6): Not Ready for Discussion - this is the default setting. It means that you are still working on this reflection. Remember, managers can view, edit and comment on all reflections. If you are making a reflection about your own practice, you may choose to keep it as 'Not Ready for Discussion'. Ready for Discussion - choosing this option will trigger a notification to be sent to anyone who has been selected within the 'visibility' options. A notification will either go to all managers, or to all members of staff, so they can join in the reflective process. This means you are ready to share the reflection and engage other members of the team with it. You may choose this status if you are making a broader reflection about whole team practice, the learning environment or a particular setting wide project, or about the needs of a particular group of children. Finished: Embedded in practice - you can select this option when you feel that the content of your reflection has become part of your practice or part of the practice of the rest of the staff, or part of the ethos or practicalities of the setting. Finished: Abandoned - choose this option if you feel this reflection is no longer relevant. The different statuses don't change the visibility of your reflection. They are useful when you are searching for reflections in the 'filter and sort' bar and they let others know what stage the reflection is at. Linking children to your Reflection Your reflection may be about how you can support a group of children, or it may be about how you can meet the needs of one child in particular. You can choose whether or not to link children to your reflection from the 'Children' section (1). If the reflection is not relevant to any specific children, you can select 'Does not relate to any children' (2). If you do wish to link children to your reflection you need to select 'Is for specific children' (1). You will then see a 'select children' button (2). When you click on this, a window will open giving the option to select individual children (1), groups of children (2) or cohorts (3). You can use the filter bar for a quick search (4). Remember to click the green 'Done' button at the bottom of this window when you have made your selection. You will then see your selected children appear in the 'Children' section on your reflection page. Linking Observations and other Reflections Linking observations and other reflections to the reflection you are currently working on allows you to show the journey you are on. For example, you may have observations that have triggered the reflection, and others that are evidence of the impact you have made as a result of your reflective practice. You can link your reflection to other reflections and to observations from the Links section (1). The blue What's this (2) button will open a window that explains all about linking reflections and observations, but we can take a quick look in this tutorial too. Clicking on the + Link Observation button (3) will open a pop-up box. In the second screenshot below you can see the options to filter your choices (4) and then tick the box to make your selection (5). Returning to your reflection you will see the observations you have linked. Clicking on the + Link Reflection button (6) brings up a pop-up box of reflections that works in the same way. So, you can filter your selection, tick the box of your chosen reflections and then you will see them back on your reflection page. Any linked observations and reflections are shown along a timeline. The reflection you are currently working on is shown with its date on the green bar (7). Any linked observations or reflections that were made before this date show up above the line and any made after will show up below the line (8). You can un-link an observation or reflection by clicking the red 'x' button (9). Adding Media In the Media section (1) you can add media (photos and videos), audio files or documents such as Word, PDFs, PowerPoints or Excel sheets to your reflection. Just click on 'Add Files' (2) to add single or multiple files, then click 'Start upload' (3). Once they have been uploaded you have the option of performing edits such as cropping or rotating pictures (4), deleting any files, either singularly or in bulk (5), or changing the order of the files using the up and down buttons (6). Adding media can help you show what you are thinking and evidence and evaluate the impact of your reflective practice. Flagging your Reflection You can organise your reflections by adding 'flags' to them and then using the 'filter and sort' tool to find all the reflections with a particular flag. This is really useful if you are preparing for some staff training, a staff meeting about an aspect of whole team practice, or if you would like to show a visitor the reflective journey on a specific theme. Depending on which flag sets you chose to activate when you enabled Reflections, you will see these on your reflections page now. This tutorial explains how to add flags sets. In the 'Flags' section (1) you can click on a heading (2) and you will be taken to a pop-up window where you can refine your selection further (3). Back on the Reflections page you will see your selected flags (4). Impact Part of the reflection process is to evaluate the outcome of your thoughts and implementations. The Impact box (1) is a space for you to write about what happened. To begin with, you are most likely to save the reflection with this box empty. Once the reflective process has been underway and you can see changes as a result, you can return to this reflection through the edit button and add the outcomes to the impact box. Don't forget to save your reflection (2) or you can save and add another (3). That's how you add a reflection with Tapestry! Happy reflecting! You can read more about Reflective Practice in our article on the FSF. Back to Main Tutorials Page
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