Learning journeys, profile expectations help please

[Net123]

Hi

 

Just wondering what you all expect from your team in terms of observations per child, tracking, do you allow gaps on the baseline and in other tracking. How do you monitor this? I am trying to put a simple hand out together to enhance us to have something to references to. Thanks for any help. ?

[hopeytg]

Watching this post with interest - I love Tapestry but find I'm having the same issues I did with paper journals - some staff do loads and some do as little as possible. We as a team are supposed to write obs for all children - on post its and the keyperson adds them to the child's journal. When I challenged a member of staff regarding her lack of observations she replied 'I've not seen anything significant to write up' - I suggested that perhaps she needs to look at her planning!!

Re baseline - personally as long as the three prime areas are complete I do not worry too much about the rest - others may disagree.

It is also finding the balance between 'significant' observations for assessment purposes and observations for parents to view - I know our parents would like to see one a week - although when we had paper journals I know parents definitely did not look a the journals weekly as they do with Tapestry.

Not sure if that helps Net123

[JohnSB]

I think it may be worth you taking a look at the discussion at http://eyfs.info/forums/topic/42556-objective-led-planning/

[FSFRebecca]

In our nursery we use the thoroughness tracker on Tapestry to help us look at this.

As a rough guide we would expect a observation per full day of attendance. So, if you are with us 3 full days = 3 obs if you are with us for 2 mornings = 1 obs. These might not always be assessed as we might be 'building a picture' of how a child is working or learning. The key person is responsible for ensuring these obs are made - they will make sure that at least one of the obs shows the child engaging in something that they are really interested in - whether that's a current play pattern or a particular activity that has excited them. The other obs might be of anything - to show their current friendship groups, or favourite areas of the nursery to play in, or them with their favourite staff member - anything that shows the child's disposition at nursery. If there is a 'wow' moment or the child asks to take a photograph of a game or model they have made (for example) this would be in addition. The obs show how the children are developing their skills and interests and so the key person might collect lots of photographs with brief annotations that can be assessed as a whole to give a holistic view of where that child is 'at'. Obviously, using Tapestry we have parents' input which helps to build the bigger picture of the child which helps us when we come to making our assessments.

In terms of the 'Thoroughness' tracker: that tells managers how many assessments have been made - not how many observations have been made (although we at FSF are working hard to get both sets of data visible in the same place). So, when we are looking to see what staff have done we look at the Thoroughness first as that gives a bit of a clue as to what is going on (remember you can filter to see specific groups of children), then we look at those children (again using a filtered view) to see how many observation they have had during the assessment period - we can roughly work out how many we would expect to see knowing how many days the children are with us and how far into the term we are.