News in brief
- Release of new iOS App
- Changes in Tapestry Contract
- Changes on Tapestry
- FSF Podcasts
- Feature Focus: Age Band Tracker
Hi Weavers,
This is a very exciting newsletter for us as it’s the first sent from our new offices! Whilst there’s a little work left to do, it will hopefully be finished very soon and then we can share some photos with you.
Release of new iOS App
This month we were finally able to launch our new iOS app to everyone! We have worked extremely hard on this new app and have been able to add some fantastic new features to it, such as an offline mode for staff, push notifications and page filters. The push notifications are available for both relatives and staff but for them to be able to receive these, a manager will need to give them permission to do this, this tutorial will explain how you can do this. You can find other tutorials talking you through the new app and other features on our main tutorials page in the ‘New iOS app’ section.
The new app is a separate one to the original, which means if you want to use it, you will need to download it from the App store. You can find this by searching for Tapestry on the App store; the new app will be labelled ‘Tapestry Journal 2’, so the distinction is clear. As they are separate apps, you will still be able to use the original version until at least the summer, though we would recommend downloading the new one so you can access all the great new additions!
If you have any questions about this, please see this post for more details or you can contact us by emailing tapestry.support@eyfs.info.
Changes in Tapestry Contract
If you are a manager on Tapestry you will have received an email from us last week informing you of some small changes we’ve made to our Tapestry contract, these are:
- A forthcoming register function means you might, if you wish, be storing attendance data.
- The new Tapestry apps mean that you might, if you wish, be sending push notifications. Those notifications would go via Apple, Google or Amazon (depending on the device) and might go outside of the EU.
- We have changed email provider for our billing and customer support from Fastmail to Zoho Mail.
You can find the full Tapestry contract here or if you are a manager on Tapestry you can find it by logging in to the browser version, going to the Control Panel and selecting the ‘Contracts’ option from the left-hand menu.
As these are amendments to the previous contract, this does mean you will need to agree to the contract again. A manager on your account can do this from the Contracts section in the Control Panel.
If you have any questions or feedback about the contract, please get in touch with us by emailing contract-feedback@eyfs.info.
Changes on Tapestry
Making adjustments to your Assessment Periods
It’s important that you set up your assessment periods on Tapestry correctly, as the tracking screens use your periods to show you data for your children. We highly recommend setting these up at the beginning of the academic year, so you don’t need to make any changes during the year, once you have already assessed children. If you do make changes to your periods during the academic year, this will result in assessments being moved between periods and might mean some manually overridden assessments are deleted.
If you want to change your periods after you’ve already added assessments, now when you go to do this, you can see how your assessment periods will look before making the change. You can then use this to decide whether you want to proceed with the changes before committing to them.
This tutorial will talk you through how to change your assessment periods as well as the information on this new screen.
Phasing out of Summative Assessment Options
As some of you may be aware, for the EYFS Summative Assessments on Tapestry, there are a couple of different options as to how these are calculated. Our default, and recommended option, is ‘Age Bands and Refinements’. This means a child’s summative assessment is calculated as an average of their assessed age bands and refinements for each aspect, in a term.
The other options available were:
- Age bands only: Tapestry averages the age bands you have assessed a child in for each aspect within a term. Any refinements are ignored.
- Age bands and statements: For each assessment (made as part of your observations), Tapestry turns the number of statements ticked into a refinement. Less than 1/3 of statements ticked is Emerging, 1/3 to 2/3 is Developing, and 2/3 to all is Secure. We then average these out using the 'Age bands and refinements' method. With this setting it's important to remember this is done for each observation, so it won't create a refinement based on how many statements have been assessed in total, just for each individual observation.
- Age bands, refinements, and statements: For each assessment (made as part of your observations), if there is no refinement, Tapestry creates one from the statements using the 'Age bands and statements' method. We then average these out using the 'Age bands and refinements' method.
After discussion within the team, we have decided to phase out these other options as we don’t think they are as helpful as the ‘Age Bands and Refinements’ option. Anyone who is already using one of these alternative options will be able to keep using it, but we would suggest considering changing it to ‘Age Bands and Refinements’. For everyone already using the default option, the others will now be removed for you.
If you have any questions about this, please get in touch with us by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info.
End of Key Stage 2 Teacher Assessment
To help you with your end of Key Stage 2 Teacher Assessments on Tapestry, you will now find on the Formative and Summative Assessment screens, any KS2 Year 4/5/6 statements within English, Maths and Science that are important for the assessment, will be highlighted with a star icon. We added this so teachers are able to quickly and easily see which statements will need to be considered for their submission.
The tutorials linked below will talk you through where to find the Formative and Summative Assessments screens on Tapestry which include these highlighted statements and how to use them.
FSF Podcasts
During the consultation on the new Ofsted Inspection Framework (due for release in time for September 2019) a phrase that has found itself discussed across the sector is 'Cultural Capital'. At The Foundation Stage Forum, we too have been unpacking what it might mean for us and the schools and settings we work with. You can listen to our discussions on two podcasts recorded to try and demystify this new phrase.
Our podcasts are available on iTunes, Spotify and Google podcasts, you can find them just by searching for us with ‘The Foundation Stage Forum’ or from the links below!
Feature Focus: Age Band Tracker
In this month’s feature focus we’re going to look at the EYFS Age Band Tracker screen, which you can use to track progress for groups and individual children.
You can find this screen by clicking on the ‘Tracking’ tab at the top of the page on the browser version of Tapestry, then in the EYFS section, click on the ‘Group View’ button in the Age Band Tracker section.
This will show you where the percentage of children are that have been assessed within an aspect, for each term. For example, it could show you 50% of your children have been assessed as 30-50 Developing. Hovering over a percentage will allow you to see just the percentages for this group of children.
You can also use this screen to track progress for an individual child by hovering your mouse over the name of a child, this will make the names of the other children disappear, so you can only see one name. You will then be able to see where this child has been assessed in an aspect, for each term (provided they have been assessed in every term).
This tutorial will talk you through this screen in more depth.