Starting Tapestry Assessment

[Charlotte Hewitt]

Hi,

I recently just upgraded my Tapestry from a trial account to a full account. As a school we already have an electronic assessment programme that currently requires an age band and stage each term and allows us to highlight DM statements that have been completed. We completed this information for all children at Easter.

Now we are starting to convert over to Tapestry I want to add in the Easter assessment information for each child so that when it comes to July I can update it with the Summer term assessment.

Basically which is the best way to add in this data? Do I add it as a baseline assessment (as we just started using Tapestry) or do I add it as a summative assessment for spring 2 (if I can).

Any suggestions greatly received as I don't want to do it wrong and then have to change it all. (and I'm trying to convince SLT to move from our current programme to Tapestry so that we don't have to complete two electronic assessments).

Many thanks for your help

Charlotte

[OlayaTapestrySupport]

Hi again Charlotte!!

Tapestry will automatically create a baseline for each of your children based on the observations and assessments added throughout the first three weeks of their 'Tapestry life'. You can check and edit each child's baseline from tracking > EYFS > baseline > individual screen. This might be useful if you'd like to set your children's baseline to what it was when they started the academic year!

However, based on what you are telling us, I believe that the best way forward for you would be to manually add the scores for the previous assessment periods directly into the summative assessment screen for each individual child, so you can then compare the data from one assessment period to another - this will also help you with tracking progress and attainment despite only just starting using Tapestry.

You can do this in two ways:

1) Manually enter the summative assessment scores in the summative assessment screen.

For this, you'd have to go to tracking > EYFS > summative assessment > individual screen. You'd then have to filter through your children - please note that you'd have to do this one child at a time - and the correct assessment period, i.e. Spring 2 2017/2018. 

You'd then be able to manually choose an age band and refinement (if you have these enabled for your account - you can check this on control panel > settings > summative assessments) for the corresponding aspects, and then manually save the changes.

2) Create one observation for each child, including a (summative) assessment for each corresponding area..

For this, you'd have to add one observation for each child, making sure that you change the date to any day included in the Spring 2 term, i.e. 12th of April.

Within this observation, you'd then add an assessment for each corresponding area for that assessment period; this assessment would have to be the actual summative assessment score, which the system would then use to 'calculate' the figures in the actual summative assessment screen.

This option will also allow you to mark any DM statements that you'd like, but please be advised that the DM statements were not designed as a tick-list as these are just examples of the kinds of behaviour and knowledge that children exhibit within those age bands. We really do not want to promote the process of turning them into a tick-list.

 

So how you go on about it is entirely up to you, but either way you can, indeed, back up your data into Tapestry.

I hope this is all clear, but do not hesitate to contact us on customer.service@eyfs.info if you have any further doubts  

 

[Charlotte Hewitt]

Hi,

Thanks for all your advice its been fab and I've now completed that part using section 1 from above.

Two queries (I know I've read this somewhere but cant find where)

*The computer has worked and highlighted in green, pink or blue where my children are upto. I presume it does this based on months, is there anywhere to make these bands wider? Because currently most of my children are pink.

*Obviously when completing assessments - summative and baseline. Tapestry makes an age and stage grade for the child based on observations completed e.g. 22-36 developing. Is there a way to set/refine this as at the moment if my children don't have any evidence or 1 piece it seems to randomly set it to developing. Generally as a school we work on development matters statsements as 1%-25% as emerging 25%-75% developing 75% to 100% secure and I just wondered if there is a way to put that into tapestry? as i have had to manually adjust some of my baseline data. (Im sure ive read about this somewhere but cant find it). 

If there is any webinars etc you can suggest for me to get to grips with the assessment bit please let me know.

Thanks for all your help

Charlotte

[OlayaTapestrySupport]

Hi Charlotte,

Please accept my apologies - I have only just noticed you replied with some more queries!

Let me answer these one at a time

Colour coding of the summative assessment screen. 

It is possible that you have your summative assessment colour coding set up so it also takes the refinement into account. If this is enabled, your summative assessment will display the colour based on the refinements (emerging, developing and secure). 

Each age band is divided in three refinements: Emerging, Developing and Secure. Each refinement takes an age frame within the age band. For instance, the 30-50 age band is divided in 30-37 as Emerging, 37-43 as Developing, and 43-50 as Secure. 40-60, on the other side, is divided in 40-47 (E), 47-53 (D) and 53-60 (S). Also, the summative assessment considers a child's age as it would be at the midpoint of the assessment period. This is, if a assessment period goes from September to December, and a child starts the period as being 46 months old, but will finish at 50 months old, the system will consider the child as being 48 months old throughout the entire period.

So let's say that your child is, indeed, 48 months old at your period's midpoint. In this case, when they are assessed as 30-50 Secure they will show as green as they are working at their age within the age band and the refinement - remember that secure in this age band covers from 43-50. However, if they are assessed as Emerging for 40-50, although the age band might seem higher than the previous one, because they are assessed with a refinement of Emerging, the summative assessment will recognise them as being assessed for the refinement period 40-47, which is below their age of 48 and, thus, it will show the results in red.

I appreciate it might take a little while to get your head around this 'maths' but once you understand this everything will appear much clearer!

So if your summative assessments use refinements when assigning the colour coding for whether a child is above, at or below expectations it will consider their age against the age period that each refinement is within that age band. We appreciate that there is some overlapping from one age band to another, and that it is possible to be working 'at' on a lower age band and 'below' at a higher one, but this is when your knowledge of the child and professional expertise determines when to worry about these scores. 

You can check if this is clicked on control panel > settings > summative assessments.

How the summative assessments are calculated. 

How your summative assessments are calculated depends on how you have configured EYFS summative assessment options for your account:

- Age bands only. Tapestry chooses the average (mean) age band from the assessments (made as part of your observations) for each aspect.
- Age bands and refinements. Tapestry chooses the average (mean) age band and refinement using the age bands and refinements from the assessments (made as part of your observations) for each aspect. We do this by converting each combination of age band and refinement into a linear scale (0-11 E = 1, 0-11 D = 2, 0-11 S = 3, 8-20 E = 4 etc.), averaging that and then converting it back into an age band and refinement. For assessments that don't have a refinement, we use 'Developing'.
- 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.
- 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.

You can check and amend this option from control panel > settings > summative assessments > Early Years Foundation Stage > base summative assessment estimations on.

However, please note that the Development Matters statements were not designed as a tick-list, or a set of milestones, where each child is expected to achieve them all. 

Nancy Stewart, co-author of the Development Matters, has written an article for us which further explains why the statements should not be used as a tick-list. You can find this article here. It is a really excellent article and I urge you to read it. In it, she explains that children do so much more than those statements might demonstrate and staff should be widening their observations and assessments of children.

You might also find the links below, to further articles on how to effectively assess using the EYFS, helpful to read through.

Everything You Need To Know About Observation - and Why We Do It
Observing and assessing extended tutorial for Tapestry users

 

We do have an 'end of year tracking for EYFS' webinar coming the 4th of July at 4 pm - would you like to attend this? You can also view all of our webinar recordings here. 

I hope this was helpful!

Best wishes,

Olaya