JackTapestrySupport

Hi, everyone. I hope your September has gone well and you’ve had a positive start to the new academic year. Whether you are in a school or nursery setting, many of you will have been welcoming new children this month. I have a few announcements and a few resources this month, which I think will be really helpful, so read on for more details. Bespoke Flags I’m excited to announce another new feature has been released on Tapestry! Bespoke Flags allows you to create your own flag sets for whatever you like. This will give you more control over your monitoring. Just like our existing flags sets, any flags you make can be added to Observations and Reflections. And you can use the Flag picker to monitor your use of these custom flags more carefully. We have two tutorials to get you started with this new feature but if you have any other questions, you can always reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info Bespoke flags - adding and editing flag sets Bespoke flags - draft flags The Tapestry Webinar. This month, one of our resident Tapestry experts and education advisors – Ben – hosted another webinar all about Tapestry and the new EYFS. It was streamed live on our Facebook and Zoom, but if you couldn’t make it for the live version, you can find the recording of it on our YouTube. Ben covered lots of topics that we have seen cropping up recently: baselining, 2 year checks, how the flags work, monitoring high achievers, monitoring progress, to name a few! I would highly recommend giving the webinar a watch. It would also make a great training resource for staff if you are looking for some free CPD. Also, Ben collected the most common questions from the webinar and has created some FAQs to support you as you move forward with the new EYFS. Our Forum Post While on the topic of the new EYFS, I want to remind you again of our Forum post. This post compiles all the resources we have created over the past few months in relation to the new framework, the new Development Matters and Birth to 5 matters documents and how Tapestry adapted to fit these changes. The EYFS and the ELGs If you don’t have time to look through all the information on that forum post, I would like to discuss one thing in more detail which has been asked about a lot this month. Lots of people have looked at our new EYFS 2021 flag set and have been surprised to see “old” aspects. For example, PD still includes “Moving and Handling” and “Health and Self Care” and it doesn’t show “Gross Motor Skills” and “Fine Motor Skills”. So why is this? Well, The EYFS 2021 flags allows you to select areas from the new Development Matters; these are the seven areas of learning we are all familiar with: Communication and Language; Personal, Social and Emotional Development; Physical Development; Literacy; Mathematics; Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design. The aspects within those areas are from the Birth to 5 Matters guidance document. These are not related to the new ELGs from the updated EYFS Framework. Some of the Birth to 5 Matters aspect titles (such as the PD ones I mentioned earlier) just happen to be the same as what the old ELGs used. The authors of the above guidance were very clear that settings should not be using the ELGs throughout the year and that they are just an assessment point at the end of the Reception year. You can review these guidance documents in the Reference section or download the full guidance materials from here: Development Matters 2021 Birth to 5 Matters If you were looking for the ELG flags, they are there under the ELG2021 flagset. However, if you plan on completing your EYFSP on Tapestry this year, you may benefit more from using the ELG2021 assessment framework as it will then feed into your EYFSP. You can enable that by going to Control Panel > Settings > Assessments > ELG2021. Controlling which assessment frameworks are enabled on your account Again, the ELGs won't help your monitoring of the child's development throughout the year and should only be used towards the end of the Reception year. While we are on the topic, a recent update means you can toggle off Birth to 5 Matters altogether if you are only using Development Matters. Doing this will remove the aspect flags, the reference material for Birth to 5 and its associated sections within the Thoroughness screen. If you already have your EYFS 2021 flag set enabled, you can toggle Bto5 off by going to Control Panel > Settings > Flags > “Configure” next to EYFS 2021. Here’s the tutorial which shows you in more detail. https://eyfs.info/forums/topic/53800-enabling-and-disabling-birth-to-five-matters-flags-and-reference-materials/ #NewAcademicYearOnTapestry If you are on Twitter, keep an eye out for #NewAcademicYearOnTapestry - we are tweeting out loads of tips and tricks for Tapestry users which are particularly helpful this time of year. Free Training Lastly, if you are looking for some SLCN/EYFS training, Launchpad for Literacy founder, Kirstie Page, is delivering some free virtual sessions through Orgill English Hub this term. This training is open to all and is applicable for schools and settings. There will be a very strong emphasis on embedding interventions into Targeted Practice. You can find out more in this post on the FSF. That’s all from me. Take care everyone and I’ll talk to you next month. Best wishes, Jack

Hi, everyone! I hope you are all well. Just a few things from me this month so read on for more details. Tapestry Customer Support As September is our busiest time of the year (as we know it is for most of you too!), our response time to support tickets may be slightly longer than usual. We always aim to answer queries as quickly as possible, so rest assured we will reply to you as soon as we can. To speed up how quickly we are able to assist you, please make sure that you contact us from the account holder’s or registered manager’s email address, especially if the query relates to your account. Please also give us as much detail as possible in your first email about the problem you are facing. This will help reduce the time it takes us to find a solution for you. If you have a finance or subscription question, please include your most recent invoice number as this will allow us to locate your account much faster. Managers can find the invoice number from the first page of the Tapestry Control Panel. Your Inactive Children Do you have “inactive” children on your account? If so, now is the perfect time to review whether you still need those children’s profiles on your account. The “inactive” status is mainly used for when a child leaves your setting, but you’re expecting them back again soon. Them being inactive means you can simply “reactivate” and carry on as normal when they return. If you do want to keep the inactive children, please check your data protection policy with regards to keeping data on children who have left. If you do have inactive children and you know you won’t need their account any longer, please delete them instead. A manager can delete an inactive child by going to Control Panel > Manage Children > Use the filter buttons at the top to show “inactive” children > Click the cog menu next to the name and select “delete”. You can delete multiple children by using the tick boxes down the right hand side. Tapestry Encyclopedia Updates In light of the updated EYFS and the changes that go along with it, we have made some updates of our own to the Tapestry Encyclopedia. These pages bring together all our tutorials, videos, webinars, podcasts, articles and documents and organises them into easy to navigate sections. If you want to know more about setting up and using the new EYFS framework, start here. If you want to know more about monitoring and the new framework then go here. We also have a very comprehensive forum post which answers the FAQs in regards to the new EYFS. This also links to loads of helpful resources which I would recommend! You can find it here. Infographics I know how busy the end of a school year can be and sometimes it’s hard to remember all the little jobs that need to be done. We have created a few “end of the year” and “start of the year” to-do lists which may help keep track of the different things you may need to do on Tapestry. They are with our other infographics and you can download them all here. New Articles on the FSF Another month means another batch of fantastic articles published on the FSF. We have part three of Helen’s “Recording Learning, Not Tracking Progress” series. An article about writing in the early years by Varinder Kaur Johal. And, for our Primary section, an article by Kirstie Page titled “Speech, Language and Communication Development in Key Stage 1”. That’s all from me this month. We are wishing you all a happy start in September and if you need any help from us you can email customer.service@eyfs.info as always. Best wishes, Jack

Hi, everyone. I hope you managed to stay cool through those hot days this July and[SK1] you are all expecting a restful and well-earned summer break. Just a few things from me this month so read on for more info. The New Flags Firstly, as a lot of you have already seen you can now enable the new EYFS 2021 flag set (and ELG 2021 if you’re in Reception) in preparation for September. You can enable any of the flag sets by going to Control Panel > Flags. But give this tutorial a read for more information on the EYFS 2021 set specifically. - Setting up EYFS 2021 (formerly Development Matters 2020) Flags are now visible on both the Android and iOS apps, but you must ensure they are the most up-to-date versions. If you are still using Tapestry Classic, you will need to download our newer app (Tapestry Mobile with the colourful logo) in order to access the flags as well as other improvements and features. This forum post goes into more detail on the changes we have made and what this means for you, your setting and your provision. The Areas of Concern Screen Explained. Speaking of the new EYFS, we have a few new monitoring screens which go alongside the new flags. My colleague Ben and I recorded another video recently where we look at the Areas of Concern screen in a bit more detail and breakdown some of the questions we have seen popping up. You can see the video on our YouTube channel here. Product Support Just a quick reminder that our product support team here at Tapestry HQ runs as normal through the summer holidays. So, should you need to get hold of us during your break, you can email customer.service@eyfs.info whenever you need. Our working hours are 9 – 5 every weekday. However, we won't be running our online training sessions between the 1st of September to the 17th of October. This is our busiest time of year so we prioritise answering support tickets. Infographics. Have you ever visited our infographics page? If not, I’d thoroughly recommend having a look. We have over a dozen resources aimed at settings, parents and staff on a whole range of topics: End of Year To-Do lists, a guide to the new EYFS, The Why and How of Adding Observations, and more. You can see the full set here. #ReclaimPlayfulness This summer, Tapestry is collaborating with Learning With Parents, a charity focused on empowering parents to become involved with their children’s learning. We’ve gotten together to promote playing in our Summer of Play campaign (under the hashtag #ReclaimPlayfulness). We have created some resources that give ideas for playful activities parents can do with their children this summer. Some of the areas they cover are “physical”, “story” and “creative” among others. You can read more about the campaign and download the resources here. Quick Tip If you are adding new relatives onto your Tapestry account, or will be soon, here’s a few tips which might help. After you have added the relatives to your account (either individually or in bulk), you can check their “status” by going to Control Panel > Manage Relatives: Adding relatives individually Adding relatives in bulk via CSV (spreadsheet) file · Active – this means they have a password already and should be able to log in as normal. They either set their own password via the welcome email, or you set one for them when adding them to the account. · Activating – this means you have sent the activation email to them but they still need to interact with that email to set a password. It’s worth telling them the email may have gone to their spam folder. · Not Activated – this means they have either not been sent the activation email yet, or they have been sent one and it has now expired. They have not yet set a password successfully and won’t be able to log in yet. If any relatives are in the “not activated” stage, don’t worry! You can send them another activation email simply by clicking the cog menu next to their name > Retry activation. On the following page, you will see a few options but the top one will allow you to send them a new activation email. It’s also worth double checking the email address for the relative is correct. Payments If you wish to pay for Tapestry by cheque or BACs please can we remind you: Cheques should be made payable to ‘The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd’ and NOT Tapestry or the early years foundation stage forum. Also, please note that our business address changed 2 years ago. If you need to send a cheque, the address is The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd, WaterCourt, 65 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XG BACS – we moved our service provider for our banking in October 2019 and our bank is now HSBC sort code 40 18 22 / Account no 42445565 Our old bank account with Lloyds will be shut soon so payments made to that account in error will not be processed. If you need further information, please email the finance team on bacs@eyfs.info If you do not deal with finance in your setting, please ensure this information is passed to the finance team so they can make sure their records are up to date. That’s all from me. Again, have a lovely summer break everyone and talk to you again in August. Take care, Jack

June Newsletter Hi, everyone. I hope you’re all well. We’ve got lot to tell you about this month so here we go! TEC Earlier this month we held our fourth Tapestry Education Conference. This one focused on parental engagement and we heard from speakers Jamel Carly, Suma Din and Janet Goodall (EdD), with guest host Tom Harbour from Learning with Parents. If you didn’t manage to join us for the live event, don’t worry! You can watch the full recording and download any supporting materials here. Android and Fire Update Earlier this month you may have noticed your Android or Fire app update. And if not, you can manually update it from the Google Play or Amazon store. The new version number is 4.0.3 The update includes a few new features and improvements: · Add and view flags Adding flags is just for staff members, but you can decide if you want relatives to be able to see them too when you turn on each flag set. · Record audio clips and attach those to observations · Switch between separate Tapestry packages This is a feature for you if you have multiple Tapestry logins e.g., if you have children at two different schools/settings or you are an educator covering multiple year groups and each year group at your school uses a different Tapestry account. It stores a list of the accounts you’ve recently logged into on the device you’re using and lets you access the PIN screen of any of them. You can choose which account you want by clicking on the new ‘switch school/nursery/childminder’ button. · Reply to observations with an observation This new button at the bottom of observations lets you create a new observation and have it automatically linked to the observation you’re replying to via ‘page links’. Birth To 5 Matters on Tapestry For those of you already using the new flag system for the upcoming changes to the EYFS this September, you may have noticed some new flags and reference material appear. This is to include the non-statutory guidance document “Birth to 5 Matters” in the current flag system. The additional aspects within Birth to 5 Matters are now available to select as Flags; they are nested within the original area flags: As well as these new flags, you will also notice additional ‘reference material’ which relates directly to Birth to 5 matters appear in the Reference Material box on the right-hand side. The Reference Material box now also appears when you make a Reflection, whereas before it was only visible while making Observations. A Change of Name – EYFS 2021 We have changed the names of a few things on Tapestry this month. This was to reflect the correct year the EYFS reforms came into official use, and also to include the Birth to 5 Matters document alongside Development Matters. Below is a list of what has changed: The flag sets will now be called: - EYFS 2021 (rather than Development Matters Guidance 2020) - ELG 2021 (rather than Early Learning Goals 2020) - CoETL 2021 (rather than CoETL 2020). The Areas of Concern screen will now be called ‘EYFS 2021 Areas of Concerns’ (rather than DM 2020 Areas of Concerns) and that will be found under EYFS 2021 in the tracking tab (rather than under DM 2020). The EYFSP form will be called ELG 2021 EYFSP and will be found under ELG 2021 in the tracking tab (rather than ELG 2020). This won’t impact any data you’ve collected using those features up to now. The New Thoroughness Screen We have a new monitoring screen for the EYFS 2021 framework, with a focus on thoroughness. It shows you how many observations and reflections have been flagged with each of the EYFS 2021 flags for each child. We strongly support the idea that practitioners do not need to make lots and lots of observations and we do not expect educators to try and reach a certain number in each aspect. We do still think that having a screen like this will be beneficial to educators though. It will allow you to quickly see if you’ve made fewer observations in specific areas, giving you the opportunity to investigate why that might be and ensure your curriculum contains rich experiences tailored to your children. Another example of why this screen might be useful to you is if you see a wide disparity in the amount of observations for certain areas, which might highlight a lack of confidence in your staff. This can guide you to more specific CPD options. EYFS 2021 Report Format We have a new report template: EYFS 2021. It is very similar to the existing EYFS report template, but it does not have the age band and refinement assessment information, leaving only free text boxes for notes and next steps for each area of learning. The ‘Child’, ‘Details’, ‘CoETL’, ‘Additional Information’, ‘Child Voice’, ‘Relative Contribution’, ‘Signature’, and ‘Media’ sections all remain. It will automatically appear in your list of available templates as long as you have the ‘EYFS 2021’ flags enabled. Payments: If you wish to pay for Tapestry by cheque or BACs please can we remind you: Cheques should be made payable to ‘The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd’ and NOT Tapestry or the early years foundation stage forum. BACS – we moved our service provider for our banking in October 2019 and our bank is now HSBC sort code 40 18 22 / Account no 42445565 Our old bank account with Lloyds will be shut soon so payments made to that account in error will not be processed. If you need further information, please email the finance team on bacs@eyfs.info If you do not deal with finance in your setting, please ensure this information is passed to the finance team so they can make sure their records are up to date. Updating your contact details With the end of year fast approaching and staff potentially moving on, we encourage you to take 1 minute to just review the contact information you have set on your Tapestry account. It’s important to keep this as up to date as possible! A manager can find this information by going Control Panel > Settings > Contact Details. You will have two options: A contact email for us to use to contact you if we need to and a contact email address for relatives to use. Only the former is compulsory. That’s it for June! Have a lovely July everyone. As always, if you have any questions you can reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info

May Newsletter Hello everyone. Tapestry Webinar This month, Ben and Stephen from our Education Team hosted a webinar entitled “Tapestry and the New EYFS Framework”. The Webinar had over 3,000 attendees and we are happy to announce the full video is now available on our YouTube channel for you to watch whenever you need! This webinar is a great place to start if you are thinking about what the changes to the EYFS could look like in your setting, as well as finding out more about how Tapestry is adapting to support you. We covered the main changes to the framework, enabling and using the new ‘Flags’ system, monitoring, and SEND provision. Also, if you want to grab the slides used in the webinar (among other helpful resources on the same topic) just go here and you can download them. Tapestry Education Conference (TEC) – Save the date We are planning another free, online Tapestry Education Conference: Reflecting on Parental Engagement. The TEC will be on 24th June, 4-6pm. Keep an eye on our socials for updates on our speakers and the main themes for the event. Child Statuses Our Customer Service team have had a lot of questions recently about the different child statuses on Tapestry and what they mean. As a result, Emily has written this handy guide which breaks down each of the 4 statuses and how they are different. If you don’t have time to give the whole guide a look, I think it’s worth knowing a bit about our newest child status - “Enrolling”: This was designed for when you want to add a new cohort of children at the end of the academic year before your current children have left. You can't use the full functionality of Tapestry with children that are enrolling. You can only: 1. Attach them to relatives. 2. Assign them to staff as key children. 3. Add them to groups. 4. Complete their All About Me. 5. Print name labels for them. It's only possible to add the same number of enrolling children as you have active child spaces, so if you have an up to 60 child package, you could add up to 60 children as enrolling. Once you make an enrolling child active, it's not possible to change them back to enrolling. Articles This May Have you ever visited the articles section on our website? If not, I thoroughly recommend it. We publish new articles every month on a wide range of education topics. This month we have one that focusses on books and story-time by Emma Davis. Another by our resident SEND advisor, Stephen Kilgour, on how you can use the new Areas of Concern Screen in partnership with the Cherry Garden Framework. And lastly, a Q&A with the UK Ambassador for Happiness, Action Jackson Feature Focus: You can use the Forum! If you enjoy the articles and resources on our Tapestry site, then why not take a look at the Foundation Stage Forum (FSF)? We also publish new articles there every month, too. You don’t need an account to read those articles. But the forum is also a lively, friendly place for discussion and reflection with fellow educators. So if you want to join in on any of those conversations, or perhaps start some new ones, you can sign into the forum using your Tapestry login details. It’s a simple process but we also have this tutorial showing you the steps if needed. The Tapestry Survey If you would like to respond to our recent survey you still have time – it will close on 31st May. The focus is on engaging with parents and carers. It explores how settings and schools connect with families, and support parents and carers who face barriers to engagement. Responses are anonymous and we’ll share a summary of the results on the Tapestry and Foundation Stage Forum websites. The results will be used to inform our article themes and to support our public relations and marketing, as well as to inform the way we develop Tapestry and the Foundation Stage Forum. We would love to hear your views. You’ll also have the chance to win £25 of M&S vouchers. We will announce the prize draw on Monday 7th June. To take part in the 3-minute survey please follow this link. If you responded to the survey early on and weren’t able to leave your email address (for the purposes of the prize draw) then please contact customer.service@eyfs.info with the subject ‘Survey: Newsletter’ and we’ll be sure to include you in the draw. Thank you and sorry about that! That’s it for this month’s newsletter. As always, if you have any questions, you can reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info Take care, Jack.

What’s New Spring is springing which means our seasonal “What’s New” video is out. Take a look here for a summary of all the things we implemented during those wintery months including new flags, new monitoring screens and major updates to both our apps. Tapestry in Key Stage Are you thinking of extending your Tapestry provision throughout your school? Or perhaps you already use Tapestry at Key Stage and would like to know more about how it can support you and your children and families? We have created this infographic which outlines some of the main features on Tapestry and how they can benefit your Key Stage learning community. You can view and download the original version of this resource on our Schools Page. Tapestry and the new EYFS. You may have seen my special mid-month announcement a couple of weeks ago about how Tapestry is adapting to fit the revised EYFS framework, but if not don’t worry! Here’s what it said: The EYFS has been revised and new non-statutory guidance documents have been released. Not long ago, we released a few resources aimed at helping settings start to implement the new changes. You can find those here. But how has Tapestry adapted to fit the new EYFS and how will it continue to work for you, your setting and your children? The Education Team at Tapestry have created another the set of resources below explaining the main changes and benefits. You can view and download the original versions of these on our website. TEC You may also have missed our recent TEC (Tapestry Education Conference). This was held in March and was titled Reflecting on Anti-Racism in the Early Years. It was co-hosted by Liz Pemberton, with speakers Faith Chow and Shaddai Tembo. You can find their presentations, and free access to the recording from the live event, on our website. These can be used to support conversations in your setting or school, wherever you are on your anti-racist journey. The Tapestry Survey We have created a 3 minute survey with a focus on engaging with parents and carers. It explores how settings and schools connect with families, and support parents and carers who face barriers to engagement. Responses are anonymous and we’ll share a summary of the results on the Tapestry and Foundation Stage Forum websites. The results will be used to inform our article themes and to support our public relations and marketing, as well as to inform the way we develop Tapestry and the Foundation Stage Forum. We would love to hear your views. Respondents will be entered into a prize draw and have the chance to win £25 of M&S vouchers. To take part in the 3 minute survey please follow this link. Thank you very much and we’ll be back next month!

Hi Weavers, We hope you are all enjoying the weather starting to warm up and you have found some time to enjoy it. We have a few important things to talk about this month so do read on for more details. The Areas of Concern Screen Earlier this month, we released the first “assessment” screens to accompany the new Development Matters document on Tapestry. On this screen, practitioners will be considering each child’s progress and development. They will be able to choose from “Concerns”, “No Concerns” and “Review” for each of the 7 areas of learning. By default, Tapestry will assume that practitioners have ‘No Concerns’, but you can confirm that by selecting it specifically. By choosing ‘Concerns’ you can highlight to yourself and your colleagues that you feel this child needs additional support. ‘Review’ is for children and areas of learning where you’re not quite sure whether the child is developing as expected yet – that might just mean you need to think about it in a bit more depth or discuss with a colleague or manager before making a judgement. In all cases though, you will be able to quickly and easily refer to the evidence you’ve collected in terms of observations for the child in each Area of Learning, and create reflections to record your own thoughts, questions, and aims. We have written 2 tutorials for each screen (Guided View and Group View) – you can find them here: Development Matters 2020 - Areas of Concern (Guided View) Development Matters 2020 - Areas of Concern (Group View) Ben and I also recorded this video where we discuss the screens in a bit more detail from a practitioner’s point of view. This may be a good starting point before you get going with the screens. It might also be a helpful training tool for other staff. Preparing for the EYFS in 2021 The reformed EYFS will become statutory in September 2021, so what does this mean for you and your setting? Our Education Team have put together a few steps you may want to consider during the lead up to the new academic year. Expanded versions of each of the steps are available to view and download on our website. TEC On the 25th March we held our 3rd Tapestry Education Conference (TEC). It was the first online version of TEC, and the theme was Reflecting on Anti-Racism in the Early Years. We were delighted that Liz Pemberton co-hosted the event, and that Shaddai Tembo and Faith Chow took part with their presentations and in the panel discussion with Liz. To learn more about this crucial and important conversation, and to access the presentations and the recording of the live event to start/continue discussions in your setting, you can visit our website here New iOS update The iOS app has a new update available to download: Version 4.3.0 This update allows you to see and use Flags on the app. We have put together this short video which shows you how they work. Please note, this isn’t available on the Android app just yet – but we are currently working on it! Cyber Security The National Cyber Security Centre published some excellent guidance this month aimed specifically at people in the Early Years sector. This guidance is comprehensive; it covers backing up your information, password control, communicating with your families, protecting your devices among other very important information for any setting using technology. You can read the full guidance here That’s it for this March edition of the newsletter. Wishing you a great Spring break.

Hi, Weavers We hope you managed to have a restful half term this very cold February! And, if you got any snow, perhaps you managed to throw a few snowballs or make a few snow angels. We have a number of developments and reminders for this month so do read on for more details. We Are Dropping Support for Some Operating Systems Later this year we will be dropping support for some older operating systems. Namely Android 4 and iOS 9, 10, 11 and below. This means that if you’re using a device that runs one of these operating system versions, you will no longer be able to download updates to the Tapestry app. Please note, you will still be able to download the app, but at some point it will become outdated and you will not be able to update it any further without first upgrading to a more recent Android or iOS version. This won’t be happening until later on in the year and we will send another reminder closer to the time. The New Development Matters on Tapestry Just as a reminder, because I’m sure some of you are starting to think about making the change to the new EYFS which becomes statutory this September, the new Development Matters has been available on Tapestry for a few months now. You can enable it at any point - for no extra charge - if you’d like to start having a look. Our education team and our developers had a lot of discussions about the new guidance and how to add it for our customers without it becoming a tick list. You can read our thinking behind these choices here. Once you have enabled the new framework, you may notice it looks slightly different. Rather than selecting an area, then age band and then statements within that age band, there is just the option to select the ‘flag’ that relates to that area of learning. You will also notice a section for ‘reference material’. This updates depending on the areas that you have selected, and if you have already selected a child, the age of the child will also determine which reference material you see first. To enable the new Development Matters on your account, please follow these steps: Enabling the new Development Matters Once enabled, you will be able to access them by going to an observation and scrolling to the "Flags" area, which appears under the assessment section. This tutorial will help you understand how to use the new framework: Using the Development Matters 2020 Guidance EYFSP for Early Adopters We have released a new screen for the EYFSP – this is for those early adopters who are assessing with the new ELGs this year. You can find this (and the other accompanying screens) by going to Tracking > ELG 2020. As usual, the data will be pre-filled in using your most recent ELG 2020 assessments on your observations. If you need to change any of them, you can do so directly on that screen. We have a couple of new tutorials for this screen, which you can find here and here If you aren’t an early adopter, you needn’t worry! The EYFSP screen you have used up to now is still there for those who would like to use it this year. Cherry Garden Changes If you are using the Cherry Garden framework, children will now be able to access their own “Orchard” via Child Login. Managers can make the Orchard visible to children by going to Control Panel > User Permissions > children. Additionally, Baseline assessments are now also included in the Orchard. This means that the leaves on the tree, or petals on the flower, will change to reflect baseline assessments. Flower petals will change if statements have been selected at all, and tree leaves will change if statements have been assessed as “refinement 3”. Bulk Marking Relatives Having Parental Responsibility In order for relatives to receive notifications about a recorded accident for their child, they need to have been assigned ‘parental responsibility’. To make that process quicker, we have added functionality to allow you to set that status in bulk. Managers can find it in the ‘Manage Relatives’ section of their Control Panel. They just need to use the tick boxes next to the relatives’ names and choose ‘Add parental responsibility’ from the pop-up options box in the bottom right-hand corner. By doing this, the relatives you select will have the ‘parental responsibility’ status instantly applied to them for all the children they themselves are linked to. As it applies to every child a relative is connected to, you should only use this bulk setting feature with relatives who are only attached to children they take parental responsibility for (so not people who have their nieces, nephews, grandchildren etc. linked to them, even if they are also linked to their own child/the child they are the primary carer for). You can see which children are linked to a relative and set parental responsibility for individual children by editing a relative (again from the ‘Manage Relatives’ page in the Control Panel) and scrolling to the bottom of the page. Parental Engagement If you are looking to improve parental engagement on your Tapestry account, we have put together this handy infographic about Parental Engagement which highlights our main features and the benefits of each: We Have Removed the “Downloads” Section on the Forum And finally, as part of an on-going redesign of the Foundation Stage Forum (FSF) website, we recently made the decision to remove the resource library section. We have taken a few resources which were popular with some Tapestry users and put them on our info site here. But any other resources previously in the library are no longer accessible. If you haven’t visited the FSF before, do stop by! We have many wonderful articles there, as well as opportunities to join in with discussions with other educators. Logging in is easy using your Tapestry details. Save the date – Tapestry Education Conference We are delighted to be holding a free online Tapestry Education Conference (TEC), Reflecting on Antiracism in the Early Years. Keep an eye out on social media for more information to follow. Twitter: @Tapestry_FSF Facebook: @TapestryLearningJournal Instagram: tapestry_fsf LinkedIn: The Foundation Stage Forum & Tapestry As always, you can reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info if you have any questions. Keep safe.

Hi, Weavers, Welcome to the January 2021 newsletter. All of us here at Tapestry HQ wish you a hopeful new year. Earlier this month, as the new lockdown started and children and families began to learn at home again, Tapestry experienced the highest traffic we have ever recorded. In our peak hour on the busiest day we had 107K observations uploaded. Although we are configured to be able to raise capacity to meet demand, and did so at this time, the exceptional level of activity as educators and families were making connections via Tapestry, revealed a deeper issue. This caused many of you to experience issues ranging from slowness to a stall in functionality. Since then, Tapestry has been stable, and it is our developers’ highest priority to ensure this remains the case. We have a couple of places you can go to if you have any questions now or in the future. The first is our Status Page. This shows you if there are any current errors on the Tapestry side as well as updates about any scheduled maintenance or current issues that we are aware of. The other place to go to is our Twitter feed. A lot of people reached out to us on Twitter during the server issues, and we tweeted with ongoing updates. If you experienced any issues with Tapestry, we are truly sorry. We understand how frustrating this must have been and we thank you all for your continued patience. The Updated Android App Last week we released a sizable update to the Android app. With it comes some bug fixes as well as additions you might find useful. · You can now view Activities and Memos that have been created on the browser version. These will appear with a little “A” or “M” next to them to differentiate them from Observations which use an “O”. · You can also reply to Activities directly with an Observation of your own. You’ve always been able to do this on the browser version, but this is new to the app. · We have made it easier to switch accounts via the app. This is especially useful if you are set up on multiple different accounts and find yourself having to log in and out of them all the time. You can see a page of FAQs about this update here. RE Flag Another addition we have made this month is a flag for RE. Flags are a way to tag your observations and reflections and make it easier to find something specific you’re looking for. Since RE doesn’t have an explicit programme of study, it couldn’t be added as a framework like the EYFS for example. Instead, any observations or reflections you make which involve RE can now be flagged as such, making everything easier to organise. You can filter by Flags if you ever need to find them again. Relatives Logging On We know that getting set up with a new tech tool can be a bit tricky, especially if you’re a parent or carer doing it at the same time as home learning and/or home working. We have updated our relative tutorial for Login Troubleshooting. This now includes an easy-to-follow flow chart to support relatives with logging on to Tapestry. This is ready to share with your parents and carers. The Home Learning Page With home learning continuing to be more prevalent than ever, we have added a new page to our website. You can find it here This page contains loads of helpful resources for staff and relatives alike. It includes a video on the best features for home learning, a Tapestry training session with Ben, and a video from yours truly on how to use Activities. Maslaha While we are on the topic of home learning, I’d like to share a fantastic video series called Learning Through Play. The four short films are available in Sylheti, Urdu, Polish and Somali and showcase 20 simple play activities that parents can do cheaply and easily at home with their early years children. The videos have been created by Maslaha as part of their Schools with Roots project. You can see part one on their website here and the full playlist of videos can be found here. Reflective Teaching Being a reflective practitioner is an integral part of working in the education sector. We are huge advocates of reflective practice at Tapestry, and we released the “Reflections” feature to support educators with this aspect of their role. Helen - our Director, and Jules – education advisor and content editor, along with Rebecca Swindells, nursery owner and independent early years consultant (and formerly an FSF colleague!), recently contributed to a book about reflective practice. It’s called Reflective Teaching in the Early Years and you can find a copy of it here. Designed for trainees, it includes evidence based guidance on key early years issues, as well as discussions of the theories that inform practice. Payments If you wish to pay for Tapestry by cheque or BACs, please can we remind you: Cheques – should be made payable to ‘The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd’ and NOT Tapestry or the Early Years Foundation Stage Forum BACS – we moved our service provider for our banking in October 2019 and our bank is now HSBC sort code 40 18 22 / Account no 42445565 Our old bank account with Lloyds will be shut soon so payments made to that account in error will not be processed. If you need further information, please email the finance team on bacs@eyfs.info If you do not deal with finance in your setting, please ensure this information is passed to the finance team so they can make sure their records are up to date. Thank you. Thank you, as always, for all the hard work you do for children and families. See you next month.