BenTapestrySupport

This week, Jules and Stephen from the Education team chatted with Stephanie Bennett and Lyndsey Hellyn, co-founders of The Curiosity Approach, about rising to new challenges and keeping hold of awe and wonder. Do you follow the Curiosity Approach? What are your views on it? Listen to the podcast here and let us know!

Whilst in the guidance it states that children should be sat at tables facing the front as a possible way to keep them safe, the schools guidance says that the safety measures for older children are not the same as for younger children. This is the key to what you are asking here. The guidance also states that you still have a responsibility to provide a full balanced curriculum including the characteristics of effective learning which remain statutory. How this would be possible in EYFS by keeping the children at tables I'm not sure. NHS guidance also still states that young children should not be inactive for long periods of time and that children aged 5 should have 180 minutes of activity per day. The thing is, you have to balance the risk with all the above. If you're able to keep the children in a bubble, as I'm sure you're already going to have to anyway, then there is no need to have things set up any differently to normal - with the resources just needing to be cleaned more regularly. One thing I said to my wife who had to get her point across to the head who was asking the same was, if they are not willing to change their approach, then state that as an early years teacher, you can not see how it will work and that you will need them to teach the first day to model to you how it will work. I'm sure after that, they will change their minds!

I think it is completely up to you and how you want to manage the risks. I agree though, I think 7 days would be an acceptable time to wait. Could also add taking temp when they arrive?

I have been really impressed with the quality of the videos and resources that they've been sharing online. You can really see the work that's gone into producing these.

I think what @finleysmaid said is exactly right - just because the child might be doing something from both age bands, doesn't mean you need to be recording it in both. If you're happy that a child is working within 30-50, then I wouldn't worry about continuing to provide evidence for 22-36 months. If you really do want to though, then you would have to create a second observation with that assessment.

It is on our list of things to come which the developers are working on I'm afraid it isn't possible to give you a time scale of when this will be ready though.

Hi, A reading diary is certainly something that we are looking into adding at the moment! If you have any suggestions as to what it could look like, or how you would hope it worked, please email customer.service@eyfs.info and we will gladly add them to the developer notes. Currently there isn't really a way to do this in a continuation way, that both staff and relatives can access, but you could maybe use tagging with something like #readingrecord and add to just one observation for each child? If you were to also set the date to one in the future, it would remain at the top of the observation list for that child which may work (although with a whole class, that might be a bit annoying as you wouldn't be able to easily see all the current observations on your home page!)

You can now enable them on your account! Just go to Control Panel - Settings - Assessments and enable the ELG 2020 framework. There is no tracking with these just yet, but this will be in place in the near future! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bJt6kSGib4

Hi Cheryl, This is something that we are looking into changing on the accident forms so that relatives can add things that have happened at home if required. One way around this for now would be for relatives to add anything they need to let you know to an observation. You could then remove this from the journal if it was no longer required. If you think of any other ways though, please do email them to customer.service@eyfs.info.

For that assessment period, that area will have an assessment, with the attached observation as evidence of it. Whether you want to continue tagging it with other observations is up to you - I used to as I always thought there was no harm in having more evidence for that area. For the tracking side, the more times you tag it, the more accurate the assessment comes. If you have 1 assessment, then Tapestry will see it as that assessment. If you have 2, it will take the average of both of them. If you're using Refinements, then, for example: 22-36E = 1 22-36D = 2 22-36S = 3 30-50E = 4 So, we have one assessment with the value of 1 (22-36E) and three assessments with the value of 4 (30-50E). To work out the average we would add up all of the assessment values, so 1+4+4+4 and divide this by the number of assessments, which is 4. This gives us a score of 3.25. We would then need to round the number to be whole, so this gives us a score of 3. We can then convert this back to an assessment value, and as shown above, 3 would equal 22-36 secure. Therefore this child's summative assessment, worked out as an average, would be 22-36 secure. As you can see from this, the more you have, the more accurate it becomes.

Without knowing exactly what the 'rules' will be in September, planning for then is going to be a real challenge! If, as expected, the bubbles are increased to 30 children, then you should be able to plan as normal, but just need to consider the resources that are being used and how you are going to be able to clean them each day. The big thing though is to consider what the needs of the children starting is going to be. If they're going to need more communication focus, then providing the opportunities to chat and talk about things will be so important.

We have just recorded a podcast with Alistair Bryce-Clegg in which he discusses this too. Well worth a listen if you get a chance: https://t.co/V4H1KjSNOu?amp=1

I haven't got anything myself that I can share with you, but I have found this page from the Early Years Alliance that has some FAQ that you may find useful if you do need to create one for yourself.

Hi and welcome along! To record your starting points on Tapestry, you could look at using Baselines. This tutorial will talk you through setting these up: Baseline assessments (EYFS) (and EYFS Snapshots - Baseline assessments for after) I never used refinements when I made observations as I was then inputting my data onto a school system that didn't allow for them - it was just age bands, so it didn't make sense to me.

I think the Documents area would be the easiest place to store these. You can use folders to keep them together as required. You can then keep the files updated and share them with the click of a button. You can also include all the staff policies there and not share them with relatives to keep them private. Whilst I can see the benefit of using the 'policies child' route, it does have its own pitfalls if parents upload something and tag that child by mistake, as it would then be seen by all the parents straight away (if your user permissions allow them to see each others observations of course) As for which policies you want to share, any that you need people to read and have access to. If they're all uploaded, then as soon as someone asks for it, you can direct them to it straight away which helps you as you don't need to spend time looking for it to share and makes you look super organised too

Exactly! Imagine working in a setting where you get sent home, so have to take cut in pay, come back, then next day, someone else has symptoms, so off you all go again - and repeat!

Ah that makes sense! Yeah...I can't see that failing in any way at all!! Thought process of someone with symptoms... "I've been to the shops, I won't know who I've been near so no point in calling ....and again, if I tell someone, does that mean I don't get paid for 14 days? It's probably nothing anyway....."

Who knows indeed! Maybe we'll find out one day! It's like the DfE telling everyone that under 5s can be tested, at the same time as NHS saying they can't!

Oh....so my initial worry remains - how are they tracking and tracing us?!

I didn't realise that this track and trace relied on an app - I did worry about how they were going to track us! Thought it was going to be like on that Ch4 program - Hunted!

Completely agree with you! Especially when those in charge are not setting the best example for others to follow....

I followed a thread on Twitter about this last night, and a number of people were saying that they would prefer to send the whole bubble home, at least until the result of the test came back negative, rather than wait for the test to come back as positive. As you say though, who pays for the staff that do have to SI for 14 days, and how does this help parents if at a moments notice, they are told that they have to return to pick up their child and stay home for 14 days (if the result of the test is positive).

With things being so focused on June 1st now, it's important that we consider what will happen in September when the children start school. Are you approaching things differently this year? How will you be welcoming the children to your school, considering they may not have ever stepped in to your school or have met you before being left with you? I know of some schools that are doing a few weeks of transition events (if possible).

A question came in to us via Tapestry and we asked if they would like us to post it here to get the views of others. They have a member of staff who has been furloughed, but has managed to book a flight to visit family overseas. They will be out of the country and unavailable for work for some of their contracted work days, although they would not been asking them to come to work during this period. Are they right in thinking that the member of staff needs to use their annual leave for this trip? They would be paid 80% through the furlough scheme and the rest topped up by the business. The member of staff seems to think they do not need to use their annual leave. I was able to find this information from ACAS, but we thought we would ask here too in case others had had similar experiences. Obviously, things have also changed now as people flying back in need to isolate for 14 days...

"There's a new Deputy in town...." (Depends if you want to go for the serious or funny angle!) More serious: "School Name Analysis Report"