Questions from a new user

[BZT]

Good evening everyone.. I am new to Tapestry and after years of pushing for it in my Nursery I am determined to show everyone how fab it is!

Please could someone explain the following:

 

Most of my team are uploading approx. 100+ observations a week, others just 20.. is this appropriate?

 

When choosing an age band for the statements do you always have to choose an age band for each learning statement? If yes how many observations do we need in each age band before we can say the child is secure in that Early Learning goal?

 

Is it correct you cannot select different age bands for each statement?

 

Many thanks

 

Bridgette

[Lauren]

Hi Bridgette,

 

I hope you don't mind, but I've moved the post you made to the discussion area so people can see it .

If there are any practitioners reading this it would be great to get your opinions!

 

From what I've heard though, how many observations are done a week really varies between settings, but 100+ sounds like a lot! How many were you doing when you were just using paper?

 

When you make an assessment you're doing it for the whole aspect. The development matters statements are just examples of what you would expect to see from a child at that level of development, you don't actually need to tick any of them. Of course, if you see a statement that fits, then go ahead and tick it, but you should use your professional judgment to choose the age band and refinement that is the best fit for the child at that point in time.
We have an article about making observations on Tapestry which you might find useful - http://eyfs.info/articles/_/teaching-and-learning/observing-and-assessing-extended-tutorial-for-t-r221

 

It is correct that you can't select multiple age bands for a single aspect. You can select a different age bands for different aspects in the same observation though!

[Mouseketeer]

Hi BZT and welcome to the forum, 100+ :-O, that is an awful lot, are you having to check them all? how are they finding anytime to interact with the children? You will probably find the novelty wears off, I ask my key staff to ensure they add a minimum one a week for their key children, others do get added (group activities - not assessed) but 3 is the max individual obs I want to see. We add Next Step evidence to an ongoing ob across the half term as well.

[Nicola_Haines_1499059107]

Hi, can I ask... When you say you add next step evidence to an ongoing observation, how do you actually do that? Currently I am asking my staff to create an observation of the next step and in the title box asking them to add in brackets which previous observation this next step has originated from. Just so I can monitor that next steps are being carried out and so that we can see from their individual profiles that this is happening. I am positive there has to be an easier way of doing this?

Many thanks

[SueFinanceManager]

Hi Nicola

 

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on making your first post ::1a

 

I am sure one of the product support team will come along soon and give further answers to your question but I know some users post the next steps information in the additional information box so that they have a record.

 

We are doing lots of work on next steps at the moment and so we hope to simply things for users in the future.

 

For further food for thought do look at our recent articles about next steps here Next steps, choose wisely

And The Practicalities of Next Steps