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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.

Hi, Weavers, Welcome to the January 2021 newsletter. All of us here at Tapestry HQ wish you a hopeful new year. Earlier this month, as the new lockdown started and children and families began to learn at home again, Tapestry experienced the highest traffic we have ever recorded. In our peak hour on the busiest day we had 107K observations uploaded. Although we are configured to be able to raise capacity to meet demand, and did so at this time, the exceptional level of activity as educators and families were making connections via Tapestry, revealed a deeper issue. This caused many of you to experience issues ranging from slowness to a stall in functionality. Since then, Tapestry has been stable, and it is our developers’ highest priority to ensure this remains the case. We have a couple of places you can go to if you have any questions now or in the future. The first is our Status Page. This shows you if there are any current errors on the Tapestry side as well as updates about any scheduled maintenance or current issues that we are aware of. The other place to go to is our Twitter feed. A lot of people reached out to us on Twitter during the server issues, and we tweeted with ongoing updates. If you experienced any issues with Tapestry, we are truly sorry. We understand how frustrating this must have been and we thank you all for your continued patience. The Updated Android App Last week we released a sizable update to the Android app. With it comes some bug fixes as well as additions you might find useful. · You can now view Activities and Memos that have been created on the browser version. These will appear with a little “A” or “M” next to them to differentiate them from Observations which use an “O”. · You can also reply to Activities directly with an Observation of your own. You’ve always been able to do this on the browser version, but this is new to the app. · We have made it easier to switch accounts via the app. This is especially useful if you are set up on multiple different accounts and find yourself having to log in and out of them all the time. You can see a page of FAQs about this update here. RE Flag Another addition we have made this month is a flag for RE. Flags are a way to tag your observations and reflections and make it easier to find something specific you’re looking for. Since RE doesn’t have an explicit programme of study, it couldn’t be added as a framework like the EYFS for example. Instead, any observations or reflections you make which involve RE can now be flagged as such, making everything easier to organise. You can filter by Flags if you ever need to find them again. Relatives Logging On We know that getting set up with a new tech tool can be a bit tricky, especially if you’re a parent or carer doing it at the same time as home learning and/or home working. We have updated our relative tutorial for Login Troubleshooting. This now includes an easy-to-follow flow chart to support relatives with logging on to Tapestry. This is ready to share with your parents and carers. The Home Learning Page With home learning continuing to be more prevalent than ever, we have added a new page to our website. You can find it here This page contains loads of helpful resources for staff and relatives alike. It includes a video on the best features for home learning, a Tapestry training session with Ben, and a video from yours truly on how to use Activities. Maslaha While we are on the topic of home learning, I’d like to share a fantastic video series called Learning Through Play. The four short films are available in Sylheti, Urdu, Polish and Somali and showcase 20 simple play activities that parents can do cheaply and easily at home with their early years children. The videos have been created by Maslaha as part of their Schools with Roots project. You can see part one on their website here and the full playlist of videos can be found here. Reflective Teaching Being a reflective practitioner is an integral part of working in the education sector. We are huge advocates of reflective practice at Tapestry, and we released the “Reflections” feature to support educators with this aspect of their role. Helen - our Director, and Jules – education advisor and content editor, along with Rebecca Swindells, nursery owner and independent early years consultant (and formerly an FSF colleague!), recently contributed to a book about reflective practice. It’s called Reflective Teaching in the Early Years and you can find a copy of it here. Designed for trainees, it includes evidence based guidance on key early years issues, as well as discussions of the theories that inform practice. Payments If you wish to pay for Tapestry by cheque or BACs, please can we remind you: Cheques – should be made payable to ‘The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd’ and NOT Tapestry or the Early Years Foundation Stage Forum BACS – we moved our service provider for our banking in October 2019 and our bank is now HSBC sort code 40 18 22 / Account no 42445565 Our old bank account with Lloyds will be shut soon so payments made to that account in error will not be processed. If you need further information, please email the finance team on bacs@eyfs.info If you do not deal with finance in your setting, please ensure this information is passed to the finance team so they can make sure their records are up to date. Thank you. Thank you, as always, for all the hard work you do for children and families. See you next month.

Hi Weavers, December’s newsletter is reaching you slightly earlier this month in an effort to catch you before you all break up for your well-deserved holiday. We have made a few new additions to Tapestry, so please do read on for more details. Your Data You may have noticed an extra button appear when you click your username’s drop-down menu. It’s called ‘Your data’ and it’s there to help all of our users get more information about their rights relating to their data on Tapestry. Relatives, staff, and managers can all access this screen by clicking on their username when logged into the browser version of Tapestry. Children who are using Tapestry’s Child Login feature can access a child-friendly version of the ‘Your Data’ screen by clicking on their name in the top left. Select and delete media in bulk. When you are editing an observation via the browser version, you can now ‘select all’ the media in bulk and delete them in one go. You’ll be able to untick any that you didn’t want to select before you click the delete button, so this should save you time when you’re deleting all but one or two pieces of media from an observation. For example, when you’ve made a group observation and uploaded a picture of every child doing the activity, then split it so you only have to type up the text once, but you only want to have one child’s picture in each version of the observation. We hope this change will make your lives a bit easier! Memo Notifications This development will make things simpler for the relatives on your account. If you have set it up so relatives receive an email about a new memo that you’ve posted, they will now be able to see the contents of the ‘notes’ section of your memo within the email itself. Please note, if you have attached media to your memo, relatives will still need to log in to Tapestry to access that. Podcasts Our education team have been continuing to meet with some wonderful guests and recording their conversations for our weekly podcast. December’s lineup includes Jules and Stephen talking to Early Years consultant Leslie Patterson about the language of labels and how they impact children. Next up, Ben and Jules spoke with Head Teacher and Education Consultant Alison Kriel about wellbeing and the importance of belonging. And lastly for this month, Ben and Jules chat to Olivia Dicker, a Year 5 teacher, about how they are using the Child Login feature to support independent learning, foster parental engagement and celebrate children’s work at her school. You can listen to all our podcasts on Spotify, Simplecast and Apple Podcasts. Feature Focus Have you tried Child Login yet? Here are 5 ways Child Login can support children’s learning in your classroom: 1) Encourage children’s independence and pride in their work. Children can make choices about their learning, how it looks, what to include and where it goes. 2) Share and review children’s progress with them. Children can easily look back over their work and you can reflect together where they want to go next and facilitate their journey. 3) Set work for your children. Create activities that they can complete on their own or in groups. 4) Provide everything in one place: any videos, photos or documents your children will need can be uploaded ready for them to get started. 5) Children can share their voices and their learning via videos, presentations, photos and audio recordings. The only limit is their imagination! If you’re interested in how Child Login can help teachers and SLT, take a look at this recent article. We have also updated our infographics library to include 4 new infographics, all designed to help get you started. As always, we would love to hear your feedback about this feature. What works, what doesn’t work and how we could change things to make them better for you. Please send all feedback to customer.service@eyfs.info and one of our lovely product support team members will get back to you. Please note, our customer services are open 9-5 everyday except for bank holidays. Paying for Tapestry If you wish to pay for Tapestry by cheque or BACs, please can we remind you: Cheques - should be made payable to ‘The Foundation Stage Forum Ltd’ and NOT Tapestry or the Early Years Foundation Stage Forum BACS – we moved our service provider for our banking in October 2019 and our bank is now HSBC sort code 40 18 22 / Account no 42445565 Our old bank account with Lloyds will be shut soon so payments made to that account in error will not be processed. If you need further information, please email the finance team on bacs@eyfs.info If you do not deal with finance in your setting, please ensure this information is passed to the finance team so they can make sure their records are up to date. Thank you. Something to Try… Did you know that Tapestry comes with 5 different background ‘themes’? One of those is a Christmas theme, so if you fancy giving your Tapestry screen a festive feel you can change your theme by going to Control Panel > Settings > Theme and choosing a new one from the drop-down menu. Wishing you all a safe and peaceful Festive Season. The Tapestry Team

Hi Weavers, November has seen the weather in the UK turn colder, so we hope you’re keeping warm as we move into winter, even if you do have all your classroom windows open! It’s been an exciting month here at Tapestry HQ with the addition of the new Development Matters… The new Development Matters on Tapestry If you are an early adopter school, you will be delighted to hear that the new Development Matters is now available via the Tapestry browser. If you haven’t already, please take a look at this tutorial to see how to enable it. And this tutorial will show you how to get started. The release of the new Development Matters guidance signals the opportunity for change: a shift of focus away from burdensome assessment and towards professional judgement and spending time with children. In response to this, you will notice that the new DMs have been added to Tapestry in a new way. If you want a bit more information on Tapestry’s journey to adding the new DMs, take a look at Ben’s article which explains our thinking in more detail. Please note, the new DMs aren’t available on the apps yet – we are working on adding them at the moment. As always, if you have any questions or queries about this you can email us on customer.service@eyfs.info and one of our Product Support team will get back to you as soon as possible. Protecting you and your data We have recently made a change to stop people from accessing Tapestry if we can see that the connection between them and Tapestry isn’t secure enough. If you’re interested in what we’re doing technically, we’ve switched off connections to ‘TLS 1.0’ and ‘TLS 1.1’. You don’t need to know what that means, but you should know that this will help to protect you and the data stored on your account. This change only affects people accessing Tapestry via an Android mobile/tablet running Android 4.4.4 or below (this is the operating system for the device), or on a computer using a really old version of Windows/OS X which uses the ‘classic app’ or an old internet browser. If you have experienced an error recently (usually when trying to upload observations) then this is likely to be the cause! The solution is to simply update your browser or download the new app. The new app is called Tapestry Mobile and has a colourful logo and this has replaced Tapestry Classic. Please see this tutorial if you use an iOS device and this tutorial if you use an Android device - they will walk you through the new apps. Rest assured, everyone’s login information remains the same once you switch to the new app. Internet Explorer We will be dropping support for Internet Explorer 10 and below from the end of December. Old Internet Explorer versions have not had any security updates or technical support from Microsoft since December 2016 so we strongly recommend that you update to a more modern browser if you are still using IE 10, IE 9, IE 8, IE 7, or IE 6. The drop of support for old versions of Internet Explorer by us means that Tapestry might not work quite as well on them anymore. You may find the layout goes a bit odd and some sections and buttons stop working entirely. This is likely to get worse as time goes on and as we add new things to Tapestry. By upgrading your browser though, you can avoid all of those issues. Microsoft explain on their website how you can do that – just follow this link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support There are other browsers available as well, so you might want to consider moving to another one entirely. We tend to use Chrome, Firefox, and (if we’re on apple devices) Safari, here in the Tapestry office, but there are quite a few options to choose from. If you’re using a mobile device/tablet you can upgrade via the app or play store. Podcasts We had some wide ranging and inspiring conversations in our November podcasts: Ben and Jules talked with Early Years ambassador Jamel Carly-Campbell about the importance of mentors and encouraging more Black men to work in the sector; our education team recorded two discussions – one about the new Development Matters on Tapestry, and another about Dr. Julian Grenier’s book Working with the revised Early Years Foundation Stage: Principles into Practice; and lastly, Helen and I chat with Annie Richardson about higher education and qualifications in the Early Years. You can listen to our podcasts via Spotify, Simplecast and Apple Podcasts. Something to Try… Have you ever considered doing your reading record on Tapestry? Earlier this year, I explored that idea and wrote this article – Three Ways to do Reading Records on Tapestry. I know some Tapestry users have tried this already with great success so if you’re looking for a new way to do your reading records, do give this a read.