BenTapestrySupport

It's only an issue when you want to remove it....

Having watched a neighbour get someone in to remove some bamboo, I was amazed at how deep they had to dig (and they brought in diggers etc to do the job)

Exactly - and one thing I think that helps settings and schools, is when the staff are part of, and understand, the community of their students.

I was shocked, but not surprised, to read that some schools are closing or being made smaller. I have been following how reactive some local authorities have been to fluctuating student numbers, and I am concerned about how they will deal with any larger cohorts in the future. This issue is often associated with rural areas, where students may have to travel long distances to find a school with space. However, the fact that this is happening in cities is worrying, as children are the future of these areas. Without children growing up and forming roots in these communities, there is a risk that the area becomes an area that struggles later on. If there is a larger cohort in the future, some of the challenges that local authorities will face are finding enough space to accommodate all of the students, hiring enough teachers to provide a quality education, providing enough resources and space, as well as ensuring that all students have access to extracurricular activities. These challenges are not insurmountable, but they will require careful planning and coordination by local authorities. It is important to remember that the future of our communities depends on the education of our children. We must do everything we can to ensure that they have access to a quality education, regardless of where they live. Personally I think that local authorities should be doing all they can to encourage young families to stay or come to the area - but do also realise that this may be something outside of their control.

There are 2 ways to Start a new Topic on the forum and this tutorial will show you how. First method: When the box below open use the drop down menu to see the forum areas that are available to post in. You can scroll down to see them all: Once you have selected the forum area you wish to post in the click continue to go there: Once in the forum area click on start new topic: You must add a title, then type in the text box where you can add links, upload files or pictures to ask you question or share information with others. You can select 'Follow Topic' to receive notifications when people respond to your post. Once happy with your post click 'Submit Topic' The second method is to just go to the forum area you wish to post in directly from the landing page. Select 'Forums' and then select the forum area and click into it and start a new topic as above: So that is how you start a new topic now let me show you how to join in with an existing topic. Once you find a topic that you are interested in you can 'Reply to this topic' buy clicking on the green tab at the top of the page or by clicking into the text box at the bottom of the page to add your thoughts to the conversation and then pressing submit reply: Use the 'Follow' link at the top if you want to follow the conversation before actually replying - see this tutorial to learn more about following content and setting up your notifications

How did the mapping out go @Froglet? I had a look back through some of my old plans, and came up with a few possible books if you were still interested: "The Wise Fool: Fables from the Islamic World" by Shahrukh Husain "The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow" by Sanjay Patel "The Three Questions" by Jon J. Muth

Over the last week, the tragic news of Ruth Perry made the news. By all accounts, the inspection report that led to this situation highlights the flawed approach that is currently in place during inspections. Ofsted's inspections have often been criticised for being too focused on achieving a specific set of targets and not taking into account the context of the school. The situation that Ruth found herself in was from Ofsted's own systems, which states that if there is an issue with safe guarding, then leadership must be failing. The rest of the report did not support this though - so where did common sense come into this? In my opinion, Ofsted should adopt a more supportive approach in their visits to schools. Instead of solely focusing on areas of improvement, they should also acknowledge the school's strengths and provide constructive feedback to help schools improve further. Spending a day at the school, and providing a few areas of development for the school to act on, before a follow up visit a few months later to see how they are getting on, would be far more supportive. I also believe that instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach, Ofsted should consider the unique needs of each school and tailor their inspections accordingly. This would not only help schools improve but also create a more positive learning environment for students. As teachers, we are expected to approach things with the child at the centre of all we do - so why not inspect with that approach too?

He gets the point across so clearly and shows why the plan from government isn't workable. If only they would listen to him!

I think this clip from yesterday sums up the issue with the offer that was in the budget. From what I've seen, the changes are for those parents who work 16+ hours. Otherwise, you get the 15 hours - which again drives up the divide for the disadvantaged groups of children. For me, the ratios thing is another area that leads to the divide getting wider. It's an optional thing - but if settings are struggling to recruit adequate staff, which is already an issue but may become a bigger issue if some leave settings to become a child minder and grab the £600 welcome bonus, then they are not going to have any option but to increase ratios. Staff-Child Ratios and Early Learning" Melhuish & Sylva (2018) found that that lower ratios were associated with better outcomes in language and maths, but that this effect was stronger for disadvantaged children. Increasing the ratios then is most likely going to effect those same disadvantaged children who may only be entitled to 15 hours. Sadly, it's just another headline grabbing policy that will lead to more chaos in the sector.

I enjoyed listening back to this podcast with the wonderful Sejal Payne on the "Importance of an oracy rich learning environment".Developing oracy skills supports children's learning across their development and curriculum by enabling them to articulate their thoughts and ideas, understand others' perspectives, and engage in meaningful dialogue.It is important to consider the unique needs of multilingual children in fostering oracy skills, as they may require additional support to navigate multiple languages and cultural contexts. As someone who was brought up in a bilingual household, I now fully appreciate what a great position I was in, but also how that extra support was required to ensure that I was able to cope.Encouraging oracy alongside literacy can create a strong foundation for lifelong learning and success and this leads on to so many more opportunities through life.I hope you all enjoy this podcast too:Importance of an oracy rich learning environment

Do you follow a scheme for phonics at the moment? It's going to be a real struggle in any classroom with only 1 supporting adult however you approach it. One thing I used to do was let the class go off in their child initiated time with the other adult supporting children as and when, and you take a smaller group for a phonics session. It's not easy though - the children doing phonics can struggle to stay engaged as there is more going on around them, so short burst sessions are needed. The other adult also needs to be constantly moving around, supporting all the other children as much as they can, without taking their focus off the others too. During this time, another option would be to only have 'phonics' focus activities which isn't really ideal for EYFS, but does mean that the general noise in the room is phonics based too, and if you are able to keep sessions short, you would be able through whole class fairly quickly if there were 6/7 children working with you at a time for about 10 minutes. You could then tailor the groups so that the children were roughly all accessing the same things.

You will only be able to register an email once on each setting - therefore if you have a member of staff who is also a relative, they would need to have 2 email addresses to login to view either of these views. One thing to note: if they have a gmail account, then they could use full stop somewhere in their name part of the email address, and it will still go to the same mailbox e.g. name@gmail.com and na.me@gmail.com - but Tapestry would see them as different emails. If they don't have a gmail account, then if they didn't mind not getting notifications on one of their accounts, then what you could do is set up one with their actual email address e.g. name@email.com, which will get notifications, and the other with something like name@email.com.relative or name@email.com.staff The one with the extra bit at the end would need to be activated manually, and no notifications would be received for it, but it would still work for them to login.

Hi, Thank you for your question. The EYFS Statutory Framework states: As this is statutory, they would be on fairly dodgy grounds to go beyond this, and it would be something checked by Ofsted for certain, and could trigger a visit. I hope that you are able to get them to listen and not push it beyond the limits.

Hi, Thank you for your suggestions. We are currently working on bespoke reports which sound like they will fit your needs of creating one place for all this information. Please email customer.service@eyfs.info if you would like to be informed when these are ready for release.

Hi, Thank you for your post. The flags are a way to keep observations together so that you can locate and refer back to them quickly - a bit like putting them in a folder. Have you seen this article that my colleague Jack wrote about a possible way to use Celebration flags? This tutorial will also explain how to use flags in general: Using Flags Do let us know what you think of these flags!

Depending on the age of the children, I ran a Goblin car club at school for over 10 years. Details for them can be seen here: https://www.greenpower.co.uk/ The children in the club do have to be between 9 - 11 to take part in the organised events, but in school, you could run it for any aged children that were sensible. It is quite expensive now to get started, but if you ask around, some other schools may have old kits that they're willing to give away. Also, sponsorship from local businesses can help with the costs. It's great for team work, as well as building a car, electrics, safety and driving!

I don't have any 'real life' advice I can offer sorry, but this might help: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/childminders-and-childcare-providers-register-with-ofsted/registration-requirements Under Facilities, it states: This could be the sticking point that the previous setting experienced as, without being able to lock that door to the other hall, you wouldn't be able to be sure, unless you had someone who always was positioned at that door - which probably wouldn't be practical. Having it covered by your risk assessment is certainly a great idea, but finding the solution to that risk might be the trickier part! Hopefully someone with practical advice will be able to help soon.

This sounds like a great idea. Please could you email customer.service@eyfs.info with the suggestion, and the types of things you would be looking for in this feature e.g. would you be needing to upload documents, link to other areas, only be visible for certain staff, would it be something that relatives should be able to view if allowed? etc... We can then certainly look into this further for you.

I love the idea of getting them to understand 'buying' the snack too!

One thing I used to do which worked well for us was, we had a photo of each of the children in one pile. When the children wanted snack, they would then go find their photo, put it in a pot, and then take their snack. This was so we could see who had taken their snack that day, and we didn't use it to make children have snack if they hadn't - but we at least knew who we could mention it to in passing if they wanted snack. It takes some getting used to for the children - some forgot to move their photo (sometimes because they forgot, others so they could get more snack!) but once it was established, it really helped as it didn't interrupt anything.

Hashtags are definitely a great way to add these and filter by them. You can use the Additional Information box for this and hide it from relatives (in User Permissions) if you wanted. Another option would be to create a set of Bespoke Flags which you apply to the observation in which you talk about the next steps. Bespoke flags - adding and editing flag sets

I think one of the points I've picked up from conversations I've had with settings that have been through an inspection, from Ofsted themselves and also my own experience when I was teaching (but under previous framework) is, whilst there is no need to have anything written down/recorded, staff must be able to talk clearly about the children, the provision put in place for them, and also why you have planned those next steps for them. If a conversation between the member of staff and inspector doesn't answer the questions clearly or is muddled, then the inspection team may want to dig deeper into this, and this is when having something written down may help. It shouldn't be a requirement though. The main issue is though, when an inspector asks someone a question, panic can set in and their thinking might not be as clear as if it was when they were just having a conversation with other staff. This can (unfairly) make it sound like they don't know their children. Also, as @louby loo mentions above, if the member of staff is away, what systems do you have in place to ensure that their key children aren't missed? It certainly shouldn't be anything too detailed as it's just the backup and shows that you've thought about it.

Hi, and welcome to the forum! I have just moved this to the Teaching and Learning area which will hopefully be seen by someone who can help. Would you mind letting me know what ARReads are please? Is it Accelerated Readers?

Hi, The first thing to check is in Control Panel - Settings - Flags - EYFS 2021 and configure. Make sure the box under Reflections is ticked to Enabled: The reason for this is because, only reflections (and observations) that have an EYFS 2021 flag attached to them will appear in the Areas of Concern screen. If you go to the Reflections tab, you will see all the reflections you have already added. Those with EYFS 2021 flags will have a purple or mustard coloured flag showing: If they do not have these showing, edit the reflection and scroll down to where you can add the flags. From here, select EYFS 2021, and the area/aspect you want to include. Once you save this, when you go back to the Areas of Concern screen, you should now see the reflection appear. If you are still having issues with this, please do email customer.service@eyfs.info and we'll be more than happy to look into your account for you.

Hi, With the new framework moving away from the tracking children through age bands etc, the new guidance materials from Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters are designed in a way to not be used in the same way i.e no age bands to track through. These are really only to be used to support and guide your planning and provision. On Tapestry, the EYFS 2021 flags allow you to show which areas (from the 7 areas of the new Development Matters and the aspects from Birth to 5 Matters if you are using them and have them enabled) an observation is related to. These are not any kind of assessment though and just a way to help you find relevant observations later when considering the development of a child in each of the areas. The flagged observations then feed into the Areas of Concern screen, which is a space that allows you highlight any areas for a child where they may need extra support or need their provision in that area adapted. Once the child is developing as you expect them to and accessing the provision planned for them, they would then be able to be moved back to no concern. We recently recorded this webinar that covers how to use the EYFS 2021 and the Areas of Concern flags. Please let me know if you have any other questions though.