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May Newsletter Hello everyone. Tapestry Webinar This month, Ben and Stephen from our Education Team hosted a webinar entitled “Tapestry and the New EYFS Framework”. The Webinar had over 3,000 attendees and we are happy to announce the full video is now available on our YouTube channel for you to watch whenever you need! This webinar is a great place to start if you are thinking about what the changes to the EYFS could look like in your setting, as well as finding out more about how Tapestry is adapting to support you. We covered the main changes to the framework, enabling and using the new ‘Flags’ system, monitoring, and SEND provision. Also, if you want to grab the slides used in the webinar (among other helpful resources on the same topic) just go here and you can download them. Tapestry Education Conference (TEC) – Save the date We are planning another free, online Tapestry Education Conference: Reflecting on Parental Engagement. The TEC will be on 24th June, 4-6pm. Keep an eye on our socials for updates on our speakers and the main themes for the event. Child Statuses Our Customer Service team have had a lot of questions recently about the different child statuses on Tapestry and what they mean. As a result, Emily has written this handy guide which breaks down each of the 4 statuses and how they are different. If you don’t have time to give the whole guide a look, I think it’s worth knowing a bit about our newest child status - “Enrolling”: This was designed for when you want to add a new cohort of children at the end of the academic year before your current children have left. You can't use the full functionality of Tapestry with children that are enrolling. You can only: 1. Attach them to relatives. 2. Assign them to staff as key children. 3. Add them to groups. 4. Complete their All About Me. 5. Print name labels for them. It's only possible to add the same number of enrolling children as you have active child spaces, so if you have an up to 60 child package, you could add up to 60 children as enrolling. Once you make an enrolling child active, it's not possible to change them back to enrolling. Articles This May Have you ever visited the articles section on our website? If not, I thoroughly recommend it. We publish new articles every month on a wide range of education topics. This month we have one that focusses on books and story-time by Emma Davis. Another by our resident SEND advisor, Stephen Kilgour, on how you can use the new Areas of Concern Screen in partnership with the Cherry Garden Framework. And lastly, a Q&A with the UK Ambassador for Happiness, Action Jackson Feature Focus: You can use the Forum! If you enjoy the articles and resources on our Tapestry site, then why not take a look at the Foundation Stage Forum (FSF)? We also publish new articles there every month, too. You don’t need an account to read those articles. But the forum is also a lively, friendly place for discussion and reflection with fellow educators. So if you want to join in on any of those conversations, or perhaps start some new ones, you can sign into the forum using your Tapestry login details. It’s a simple process but we also have this tutorial showing you the steps if needed. The Tapestry Survey If you would like to respond to our recent survey you still have time – it will close on 31st May. The focus is on engaging with parents and carers. It explores how settings and schools connect with families, and support parents and carers who face barriers to engagement. Responses are anonymous and we’ll share a summary of the results on the Tapestry and Foundation Stage Forum websites. The results will be used to inform our article themes and to support our public relations and marketing, as well as to inform the way we develop Tapestry and the Foundation Stage Forum. We would love to hear your views. You’ll also have the chance to win £25 of M&S vouchers. We will announce the prize draw on Monday 7th June. To take part in the 3-minute survey please follow this link. If you responded to the survey early on and weren’t able to leave your email address (for the purposes of the prize draw) then please contact customer.service@eyfs.info with the subject ‘Survey: Newsletter’ and we’ll be sure to include you in the draw. Thank you and sorry about that! That’s it for this month’s newsletter. As always, if you have any questions, you can reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info Take care, Jack.

What’s New Spring is springing which means our seasonal “What’s New” video is out. Take a look here for a summary of all the things we implemented during those wintery months including new flags, new monitoring screens and major updates to both our apps. Tapestry in Key Stage Are you thinking of extending your Tapestry provision throughout your school? Or perhaps you already use Tapestry at Key Stage and would like to know more about how it can support you and your children and families? We have created this infographic which outlines some of the main features on Tapestry and how they can benefit your Key Stage learning community. You can view and download the original version of this resource on our Schools Page. Tapestry and the new EYFS. You may have seen my special mid-month announcement a couple of weeks ago about how Tapestry is adapting to fit the revised EYFS framework, but if not don’t worry! Here’s what it said: The EYFS has been revised and new non-statutory guidance documents have been released. Not long ago, we released a few resources aimed at helping settings start to implement the new changes. You can find those here. But how has Tapestry adapted to fit the new EYFS and how will it continue to work for you, your setting and your children? The Education Team at Tapestry have created another the set of resources below explaining the main changes and benefits. You can view and download the original versions of these on our website. TEC You may also have missed our recent TEC (Tapestry Education Conference). This was held in March and was titled Reflecting on Anti-Racism in the Early Years. It was co-hosted by Liz Pemberton, with speakers Faith Chow and Shaddai Tembo. You can find their presentations, and free access to the recording from the live event, on our website. These can be used to support conversations in your setting or school, wherever you are on your anti-racist journey. The Tapestry Survey We have created a 3 minute survey with a focus on engaging with parents and carers. It explores how settings and schools connect with families, and support parents and carers who face barriers to engagement. Responses are anonymous and we’ll share a summary of the results on the Tapestry and Foundation Stage Forum websites. The results will be used to inform our article themes and to support our public relations and marketing, as well as to inform the way we develop Tapestry and the Foundation Stage Forum. We would love to hear your views. Respondents will be entered into a prize draw and have the chance to win £25 of M&S vouchers. To take part in the 3 minute survey please follow this link. Thank you very much and we’ll be back next month!

Hi Weavers, We hope you are all enjoying the weather starting to warm up and you have found some time to enjoy it. We have a few important things to talk about this month so do read on for more details. The Areas of Concern Screen Earlier this month, we released the first “assessment” screens to accompany the new Development Matters document on Tapestry. On this screen, practitioners will be considering each child’s progress and development. They will be able to choose from “Concerns”, “No Concerns” and “Review” for each of the 7 areas of learning. By default, Tapestry will assume that practitioners have ‘No Concerns’, but you can confirm that by selecting it specifically. By choosing ‘Concerns’ you can highlight to yourself and your colleagues that you feel this child needs additional support. ‘Review’ is for children and areas of learning where you’re not quite sure whether the child is developing as expected yet – that might just mean you need to think about it in a bit more depth or discuss with a colleague or manager before making a judgement. In all cases though, you will be able to quickly and easily refer to the evidence you’ve collected in terms of observations for the child in each Area of Learning, and create reflections to record your own thoughts, questions, and aims. We have written 2 tutorials for each screen (Guided View and Group View) – you can find them here: Development Matters 2020 - Areas of Concern (Guided View) Development Matters 2020 - Areas of Concern (Group View) Ben and I also recorded this video where we discuss the screens in a bit more detail from a practitioner’s point of view. This may be a good starting point before you get going with the screens. It might also be a helpful training tool for other staff. Preparing for the EYFS in 2021 The reformed EYFS will become statutory in September 2021, so what does this mean for you and your setting? Our Education Team have put together a few steps you may want to consider during the lead up to the new academic year. Expanded versions of each of the steps are available to view and download on our website. TEC On the 25th March we held our 3rd Tapestry Education Conference (TEC). It was the first online version of TEC, and the theme was Reflecting on Anti-Racism in the Early Years. We were delighted that Liz Pemberton co-hosted the event, and that Shaddai Tembo and Faith Chow took part with their presentations and in the panel discussion with Liz. To learn more about this crucial and important conversation, and to access the presentations and the recording of the live event to start/continue discussions in your setting, you can visit our website here New iOS update The iOS app has a new update available to download: Version 4.3.0 This update allows you to see and use Flags on the app. We have put together this short video which shows you how they work. Please note, this isn’t available on the Android app just yet – but we are currently working on it! Cyber Security The National Cyber Security Centre published some excellent guidance this month aimed specifically at people in the Early Years sector. This guidance is comprehensive; it covers backing up your information, password control, communicating with your families, protecting your devices among other very important information for any setting using technology. You can read the full guidance here That’s it for this March edition of the newsletter. Wishing you a great Spring break.

Hi, Weavers We hope you managed to have a restful half term this very cold February! And, if you got any snow, perhaps you managed to throw a few snowballs or make a few snow angels. We have a number of developments and reminders for this month so do read on for more details. We Are Dropping Support for Some Operating Systems Later this year we will be dropping support for some older operating systems. Namely Android 4 and iOS 9, 10, 11 and below. This means that if you’re using a device that runs one of these operating system versions, you will no longer be able to download updates to the Tapestry app. Please note, you will still be able to download the app, but at some point it will become outdated and you will not be able to update it any further without first upgrading to a more recent Android or iOS version. This won’t be happening until later on in the year and we will send another reminder closer to the time. The New Development Matters on Tapestry Just as a reminder, because I’m sure some of you are starting to think about making the change to the new EYFS which becomes statutory this September, the new Development Matters has been available on Tapestry for a few months now. You can enable it at any point - for no extra charge - if you’d like to start having a look. Our education team and our developers had a lot of discussions about the new guidance and how to add it for our customers without it becoming a tick list. You can read our thinking behind these choices here. Once you have enabled the new framework, you may notice it looks slightly different. Rather than selecting an area, then age band and then statements within that age band, there is just the option to select the ‘flag’ that relates to that area of learning. You will also notice a section for ‘reference material’. This updates depending on the areas that you have selected, and if you have already selected a child, the age of the child will also determine which reference material you see first. To enable the new Development Matters on your account, please follow these steps: Enabling the new Development Matters Once enabled, you will be able to access them by going to an observation and scrolling to the "Flags" area, which appears under the assessment section. This tutorial will help you understand how to use the new framework: Using the Development Matters 2020 Guidance EYFSP for Early Adopters We have released a new screen for the EYFSP – this is for those early adopters who are assessing with the new ELGs this year. You can find this (and the other accompanying screens) by going to Tracking > ELG 2020. As usual, the data will be pre-filled in using your most recent ELG 2020 assessments on your observations. If you need to change any of them, you can do so directly on that screen. We have a couple of new tutorials for this screen, which you can find here and here If you aren’t an early adopter, you needn’t worry! The EYFSP screen you have used up to now is still there for those who would like to use it this year. Cherry Garden Changes If you are using the Cherry Garden framework, children will now be able to access their own “Orchard” via Child Login. Managers can make the Orchard visible to children by going to Control Panel > User Permissions > children. Additionally, Baseline assessments are now also included in the Orchard. This means that the leaves on the tree, or petals on the flower, will change to reflect baseline assessments. Flower petals will change if statements have been selected at all, and tree leaves will change if statements have been assessed as “refinement 3”. Bulk Marking Relatives Having Parental Responsibility In order for relatives to receive notifications about a recorded accident for their child, they need to have been assigned ‘parental responsibility’. To make that process quicker, we have added functionality to allow you to set that status in bulk. Managers can find it in the ‘Manage Relatives’ section of their Control Panel. They just need to use the tick boxes next to the relatives’ names and choose ‘Add parental responsibility’ from the pop-up options box in the bottom right-hand corner. By doing this, the relatives you select will have the ‘parental responsibility’ status instantly applied to them for all the children they themselves are linked to. As it applies to every child a relative is connected to, you should only use this bulk setting feature with relatives who are only attached to children they take parental responsibility for (so not people who have their nieces, nephews, grandchildren etc. linked to them, even if they are also linked to their own child/the child they are the primary carer for). You can see which children are linked to a relative and set parental responsibility for individual children by editing a relative (again from the ‘Manage Relatives’ page in the Control Panel) and scrolling to the bottom of the page. Parental Engagement If you are looking to improve parental engagement on your Tapestry account, we have put together this handy infographic about Parental Engagement which highlights our main features and the benefits of each: We Have Removed the “Downloads” Section on the Forum And finally, as part of an on-going redesign of the Foundation Stage Forum (FSF) website, we recently made the decision to remove the resource library section. We have taken a few resources which were popular with some Tapestry users and put them on our info site here. But any other resources previously in the library are no longer accessible. If you haven’t visited the FSF before, do stop by! We have many wonderful articles there, as well as opportunities to join in with discussions with other educators. Logging in is easy using your Tapestry details. Save the date – Tapestry Education Conference We are delighted to be holding a free online Tapestry Education Conference (TEC), Reflecting on Antiracism in the Early Years. Keep an eye out on social media for more information to follow. Twitter: @Tapestry_FSF Facebook: @TapestryLearningJournal Instagram: tapestry_fsf LinkedIn: The Foundation Stage Forum & Tapestry As always, you can reach us on customer.service@eyfs.info if you have any questions. Keep safe.