The Foundation Stage Forum Community
Welcome to the FSF – a community for early years professionals. Engage in conversations, offer and receive advice and support, make connections. Discover our library of education articles and podcast episodes to enhance your reflective practice. Working together to achieve high-quality early childhood education.
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Posts:470,906
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Members:49,490
Reflecting on Kerry Murphy’s talk on ‘Neurodiversity – Affirming Commu…
by Vanna Fossella
Educator and Tapestry product support specialist Vanna Fossella shares her reflections after attending a key note talk by Kerry Murphy at the 2024 Newham Early Years Conference.
Podcast: How can we support children to live in an ever-changing digital world?
Ben and Jules chatted with Hannah Clifford, founder of Seren Kids, which provides children and adults with digital skills and e-safety knowledge. Hannah shares ideas about how to talk with children about e-safety, how to teach children to have a crea…
Social Entrepreneur, Speech and Language Therapist, adjunct lecturer a…
In this article, Warda explains why developing advocacy skills is important and shares strategies on how to do it effectively.
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The importance of reflection in relation to professional development.
Hi, my name is Joe Carreyett and I am near completion of the level 3 Early Years Educator qualification with Learndirect. I am a qualified musician and am wanting to combine my love of music with early years education. I am hoping to train as a Music Therapist in the future. As part of my final module I have been signposted to this forum to discuss theoretical prospectives in relation to reflective practice. I have learned that reflective practice is the process of re-evaluating oneself in order to progress and achieve personal goals. Theorist John Dewy has suggested that it is a ‘ complex, rigorous, intellectual, and emotional enterprise that takes time to do well’. Whilst Gibbs has advised that by using a model which goes through the following stages: ‘description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusions and action plan’, ensures that the participant slows down their thoughts in order to critically evaluate themselves and make important decisions regarding how they are going to progress effectively. I feel at the beginning of my studies I was anxious to get through my modules and I maybe was not critical enough in my evaluation of areas where I needed to improve, and also I was not confident in my successes. By gaining more experience and underpinning knowledge I have been able to see the value in taking time to reflect on my experiences both personal and professional that have impacted on my work. This has given me the necessary building blocks to ensure that I am still on the right career pathway and/or show me other avenues I could explore. I agree with Dewy that it is a complex process, and lots of factors both externally and within your job role can affect your drive and commitment both to yourself and to others. It is important, I feel, that time is given within the workplace for self-evaluation. Within my setting staff supervision and appraisals are processes which provide some opportunities for reflection in a more formalised way. However I think that informal reflection is also beneficial. For example, I suggested that maybe all members of the team had a personal diary which they could complete with comments, ideas, how they are feeling about something which is being practiced within the setting or external influences which may be affecting them at the time. These diaries would be confidential to the participant, and 30 minutes would be given every week during work time for them to be completed. Then if they chose they could discuss points included in their personal diary during staff meetings, or personally with management if appropriate. By writing things down, even if the participant decides not to share this information with others it enables them to evaluate themselves and their own personal practice, which in itself will provide analysis and conclusions which will support their practice moving forward. This I feel is beneficial to the setting as a whole, and therefore the time given for this process is justified. Do any of your settings follow a similar process? Thank you for your contributions. Joe -
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Multi Factor Authentication
Managers can now enable MFA for all managers, all staff, and/or all relatives from within the control panel. Provided that the user’s email is secure and available, this can help to prevent a stolen or guessed password from being used to access a Tapestry account. Once enabled, when a user first logs in with their email and password, they will be emailed an authentication code that they must enter in order to continue with their login. They will need to complete the process of receiving and entering a code every 30 days and whenever they login from a new IP address. Note PIN only users cannot receive an emailed code, but do still need a staff or manager user to fully log in and switch user before they can access Tapestry using their PIN. Our 'How to use MFA' tutorial explains how to enable MFA on your account: -
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iOS 5.2.1.
We have released another update for iphone and ipad users. This is another very small update without any new features, but it should improve your overall experience with the app. -
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How to split an observation on the Android app
To split group observations on the Android app you will need to ensure you have updated your app to at least version 5.3.0 to access this feature. If you want to split group observations on the browser version of Tapestry, please have a look at this tutorial instead. Once logged in, tap on the group observation you'd like to split. Then scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap on the last option at the bottom of the page, 'Split observation' (this option will only appear on group observations). After selecting option to split the group observation you'll then be taken to a screen where at the bottom you will see a list of all the children that are currently included in the observation (1). To split the whole observation just select 'Split All' at the top (2). This will split the observation straight away so each child in the observation will then have their own individual observation. If you want some children to remain in the original observation and you just want to split off a few children, you'll need to use the option 'Split Ticked' (3). To just split off some children from the observation, you'll firstly need select the children you want split off (1) and then just choose the 'Split Ticked' option (2). After you have chosen either option (to split the whole observation or just split off some children), you'll be taken back to the main Threads page and you will now see the duplicated observations in the list. So, that's it! We hope you found this tutorial helpful. Back to Main Tutorials Page -
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Management System: Parent Invoice View
Parents and carers set as bill payers on Tapestry can now easily access their invoices and account balances directly from their account. What does this mean? Bill payers will be able to view their invoices both from the browser version of Tapestry and the app. The statement will clearly display how much they owe or any credit they have. They’ll be able to download a PDF copy of their invoice. They’ll be able to see any previous charges and payments. You can share the below tutorials with parents and carers through a Tapestry Memo to let them know about this: Receiving and viewing invoices through Tapestry How to view invoices on the iOS app How to view invoices on the Android app
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