Montessori manual assessment screen > EYFS ?

[Mouseketeer]

‘We have added a new Montessori Summative Assessment screen to Tapestry, from which you will be able to manually add assessments and refinements for Montessori activities without having to add a full observation!‘

This sounds wonderful if you use Montessori and something I’ve always thought would make life easy if you could do the same in the EYFS individual summative screen ....is there any chance this could be included? 

[FSFRebecca]

Good morning Mouseketeer,

Thank you for your question  If we have understood you correctly you want to be able to manually adjust assessments without making an observation? This is something that you can already do.

If you look at your group summative screen you will see all the assessments that have been made, if there are any you need to change, click on the child's name at the side and their individual page will appear with all the assessment and refinement options open. You can then make any changes you need to, remember to save the changes!

When you look back to the summative screen you will see the 'manually defined' assessments showing with a little pencil icon by the side to show which ones have not come from observations.

If we've got the wrong end of the stick, apologies, ask again and we'll try to help! 

[Mouseketeer]

Thanks Rebecca, since posting I've included the Montessori (we aren't) just to play around with as I know nothing about how Montessori assessing (as childish as this sounds the 'knobbed cylinders' made me chuckle), the Montessori looks broken down into what I guess would be (whispers) statements in EYFS terms. I've made an ob and included some Montessori assessments, I've looked at both the summative assessment and overview screens but can't see how you manually add/change anything from those screens, I must be missing out something? I'd really like to be able to manually adjust the EYFS development matters screen.

[Lauren]

Hi Mouseketeer! 

Yeah the Montessori framework is a bit different to EYFS - the descriptors are all things to be specifically assessed there, rather than the Development Matters statements for EYFS which should just be treated as ideas of the sorts of thing a child in that age band would do. 

It's not possible to manually assess the development matters statements from that screen (marked '1' in the attached screenshot) for EYFS precisely because we don't want to encourage people to use them as a tick list, but you can override the age bands and refinements in the summative assessment individual screen (marked '2'). Is that the screen you're looking at? 

Best wishes,
Lauren

[Mouseketeer]

Hi Lauren, thanks, I get what you're saying about them being definitive outcomes to assess against, more like the 'Desirable Outcomes' used to be in days gone by and I really do get the 'Tapestry not being a tick list', but what I don't really understand is what the difference is between being able to 'tick' the statements when you complete an observation and being able to manually select them from the development matters screen?

[Lauren]

You make a fair point! We thought that it did make more sense to be able to select them in the observation, presuming they're relevant, because it saves the practitioner from typing the same thing up again in the notes bit. We were never keen to add a screen which counted the number of times each one had been selected, but we were asked for it by lots and lots of users so eventually we went with popular demand! 

Best wishes,
Lauren

[Keyup]

Mouseketeer are you asking to be able to add your own dev matters to the drop down list? If so thats exactly what we want aswell, it seems were both at similar stages of Tapestry use. I find that the same statements get ticked off every term and were not really seeing whether little Johnny can do his coat up or put his shoes on with or without help as staff just cant get their head round that these are guidance not what we actually want to see them doing. Lauren is it possible to add say a school readiness assessment list that is user defined? xx

[Mouseketeer]

Hi Keyup, yes I’d like to be able to just mark off the the statements you know they can do from the DM screen, then what I’d really like is to see the same statements marked or shaded when you view them whilst assessing an ob (for individuals) I know I don’t want much  but I think it would help move progress forward if staff weren’t ‘ticking’ the same statements over and over, to be fair it isn’t easy to remember what 15 key children have already achieved when assessing an ob and then someone else might be doing the ob and not know what the key person has already assessed.

[Sneha]

Hello all! 

Since the Montessori summative assessment screen has sparked several questions, I thought I might explain a bit about that screen and why it was added. 

The Montessori curriculum works differently to the EYFS in which the activities (of which there are many!) can be completed at any age and several times over the year. Therefore it isn't possible for each activity to have an individual observation added each time and is why we created a screen where you could add an assessment for Montessori activities specifically (not the EYFS statements they are linked to) without having to add an observation. This is to give a more rounded picture of the child's abilities and skills within the Montessori curriculum.

The suggested EYFS statements for each activity - are just that - 'suggestions'. They are taken from EYFS age bands we felt were appropriate for that activity but in no way set in stone, as an older child may complete an activity that has a lower age band suggestion but this doesn't mean that they are regressing in any way and vice versa. The EYFS statements were added as a 'teachers guide' to link the Montessori curriculum to the EYFS - but of course each child will achieve something different out of the activity and practitioners are free to select their own statements which are more suitable. 

So if you add an assessment on the Montessori summative assessment screen, this will have no effect on the EYFS statements. 

Regarding the EYFS statements; as my colleagues Lauren and Rebecca have mentioned we do indeed have 2 screens for EYFS which will allow you to; 

a) View the development matters statements that have assessments to give you an idea of what has been covered during each period- but not be able to add/override data on this screen in order to avoid the tick list approach. 

b) Override summative assessments according to period so you still have a good idea of where the child is within each EYFS area and aspect and can amend these scores according to your own judgement without needing to select specific statements you feel would bring the child up to the level you believe they are at.  

I hope this clarifies the differences a little? 

[Keyup]

My request is slightly different I think in that I would like to be able to add my own suggestive Development matters similar to how we can add our own next steps, is that possible?x

[Lauren]

It's not possible to add additional statements beneath the development matters statements I'm afraid Keyup. We will be adding a way to create your own assessment framework though, which will be starting as a way of tagging observations with chosen words/phrases. The idea is that you will then be able to find all the observations with those tags in and some basic statistics about them e.g. the number of them for each child. 
Do you think that might work for you?

Best wishes,
Lauren