Setting up and using the Cherry Garden framework

[Lauren]

 

We've worked with Cherry Garden School, an outstanding specialist school for pupils from 2-11 years old in the London Borough of Southwark, to bring their assessment framework for children with learning differences to life on Tapestry! Using their years of specialist teaching experience and by building on parts of the popular Routes for Learning framework, Cherry Garden have created a unique framework for students working at a level expected for typically developing children aged 0-5 years. 

In short, it is a bank of statements relating to 9 areas of learning (this is broken into 24 aspects).  Each aspect has up to 10 branches indicating a different 'level' with branch 1 being roughly equivalent to what you'd expect from a typically developing 0-5 month old, and branch 10 being roughly equivalent to a typically developing child in the first few months of year one. Every statement can be refined to show very small steps of progress and some statements have different criteria to show the skill is being displayed in different contexts, for example the statement 'Uses simple sentences' has criteria of 'To make a request', 'To comment', and 'To ask a question'. 

In this tutorial I'll cover how you can enable and configure the Cherry Garden framework on Tapestry. 

As with enabling all frameworks on Tapestry, the first thing to do is make sure you're logged into the browser version of Tapestry as a manager. You'll then need to click on your name in the top right hand corner and select 'Control Panel' (1).

 

From there simply go to ' Settings' (2), then 'Assessments' (3) then scroll down the page a little (4).

You'll find the Cherry Garden framework option in the 'United Kingdom' section, so just click the button next to it, 'Configure' (5). 

 

 

 

That will bring up a pop up box. The first thing to do here is tick the box to enable the framework (1). Once you have done that you will see an option to also 'Display Cherry Garden to relatives' (2). As with the other assessments, if you tick to include it, this means that any Cherry Garden assessments you make (or have made) as part of an observation will be visible to relatives. The screens within the tracking section (e.g. the statement and progress screens) will not be visible to relatives regardless of what you choose here though. 

 

 

Below that you will be able to set a 'Best Fit Threshold'. This will come into play when you look at the progress screens. We know that children don't always develop skills in the way you might expect and this can be particularly true for children with learning differences. As such it's not unusual for them to be working in multiple branches within an aspect at once. The best fit score however, is the best fit branch for that child in that aspect. It's calculated by finding the branch with the highest % score but excluding those with a % score above the 'Best Fit Threshold'. So essentially, this % should be the % where you would consider a branch complete. You can come back to this and change it at any point though so if you're just getting started and aren't sure yet, it might be better to just leave it as the default (80%) until you're a bit more familiar with it. 
 

 

The next section is for you to decide how many refinements you'd like. It can be as few as 3 or as many as 10 - just select the number you want from the drop down box. If you'd like a different number though, please just email us at customer.service@eyfs.info and we'll see what we can do.

Please note, if you would like to use the Cherry Garden Orchard graphic, we recommend having 3 refinements enabled on your account and assigning the third refinement when a child is secure in a statement. Although statements with any refinements will show up on the flower, only statements assessed with the third refinement will appear on the tree.

These refinements are for the statements within the branches and how many you choose will depend on how small the steps of progress are that you want to see. 

Once you have made an assessment using a particular refinement, you will not be able to reduce the number of refinements until a new academic year (based on how your periods are set up on Tapestry). You can add more refinements at any point, but if you do that, previously made refinements may no longer be correct. Because of both of these things, we recommend that you think about how many refinements you'll need before you get going with assessments and review that at the beginning of each academic year to make sure you're happy. 

 

 

Beneath that you will be able to name your refinements with a long name, a short name of up to 4 characters (for charts and graphs), and assign a colour to it. 

With these refinements, the first one should be your lowest refinement and the highest one numerically should be the most secure one. 

 

 

When you're happy with all your choices, remember to press 'submit' at the bottom of the page. 
 

 

That's it! You'll now be able to see the Cherry Garden option in your tracking section at the very top of the page.

 

 

You'll also be able to see it as an assessment picker when you're making observations. 

 

 

 

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