Hi Weavers,

Welcome to our September Tapestry newsletter.

This month has been a big one for schools and Early Years settings who have been welcoming children back, settling new children and meeting new and challenging safety guidance. Also the new Development Matters was published this month, so Early Adopter schools will be working with the new EYFS.

The new ELGs have already been added to Tapestry and can be enabled on your account by a manager from within the Control Panel -> Settings -> Assessments. This video also talks you through how.

We know there are lots of you who are very keen to see the new Development Matters also added to Tapestry and we can assure you that we are working hard on this! You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with any content we add to support your use of these new documents, and where we will announce the addition of the new DMs guidance to Tapestry.

In the meantime, if you are an early adopter, you might find it useful to use the tagging feature on Tapestry to highlight the new areas in your observations. This tutorial explains how to use tagging.

We have a range of resources to support your use of the new Development Matters guidance, including a podcast featuring author of the new Development Matters Dr Julian Grenier, Ofsted Deputy Director of Schools and Early Years Gill Jones and Early Years HMI Wendy Ratcliff. They discuss the principles behind the new guidance and bust myths around data. A video of this can be watched here.

One of our co-founders and Directors, Helen Edwards, has also written an article considering the message of the original and revised Development Matters and assessing with ticklists. You can read this online here.

Monthly infographics 

We know our weekly EYFS infographics proved to be very popular during lockdown, so we have decided to keep going with them on a monthly basis.

September’s EYFS infographic can be downloaded from our infographics library page.

We also have a bonus infographic this month focused on outdoor learning which can also be downloaded from the infographics page.

We will release our monthly infographic on the first Wednesday of every month, so watch out for the next one on the 7^th October!

Transitioning between academic years 

To help you ensure your account is set up for the new academic year, make sure to watch this video, which talks you through all the steps you may need to take.

If you are new to Tapestry or have a new account, the videos linked below explain how you can set up your account from scratch, one is designed for EYFS settings and the other is for KS1/KS2 settings.

Welcome to Tapestry – Early Years

Welcome to Tapestry – Key Stage

We also thought we would put some of our FAQs from the start of the academic year in this newsletter in case you had similar questions!

Do inactive or awaiting deletion children take up space on your account?

No! As soon as you select children to make them inactive or delete them from your account, they will no longer take up child spaces. This means if you need to add new children, you can then do so.

Do enrolling children become active once you have enough free child spaces or at a specific time?

Children that are ‘enrolling’ will only become active once you make them so on your account. This tutorial talks you though how to do this.

What can parents see when you set them up?

You can set what parents can see and do on your account from the User Permissions page within the Control Panel. Only managers on Tapestry have access to the Control Panel, so this will need to be done by a manager on your account.

Remember, parents can’t see any observations made by staff that are ‘not in journal’. They will only see them once they have been approved.

Change of security connections

To increase our security we are going to switch off connections to http://tapestryjournal.com and https://eyfs.info using what is known as ‘TLS 1.0’ and ‘TLS 1.1’ from November.

You should only notice this if you are:

• Using an Android 4 device, and are either using a very old browser or our old app. In those cases you will need to install an up to date browser (e.g., Chrome or Firefox) or the latest version of our app.
• Using an extremely old version of Windows or an extremely old version of OS X. You may need to install an up to date browser (e.g., Chrome or Firefox) if you can. Everyone else is likely to already be using the more modern security protocols known as ‘TLS 1.2’ and ‘TLS 1.3’.

If you have any questions about this, please email customer.service@eyfs.info.

Feature Focus: Transferring children between Tapestry accounts

If you have children who have just started at your setting - or who will be starting soon - or you have children moving to another setting that also uses Tapestry, it is possible to transfer their account to the other setting.

This process involves the sending setting starting the transfer and giving the receiving setting a transfer name and key which they can then enter into their account. There are then a few steps of confirmation required and the children will then be added to the receiving setting’s account as enrolling. Relatives can also be included in child transfers.

This tutorial will talk you through the whole process.

Reminders

• If you are making payment for a Tapestry invoice by BACS and are part of an academy or trust, if the BACS payment will be coming from the academy/trust, please ensure the name of this is included on your remittance advice sent to bacs@eyfs.info. Failure to send a remittance to bacs@eyfs.info or failure to include the correct payment reference on the remittance can lead to a delay in your invoice being marked as paid.
• We process all BACS payments manually, so if you expect us to receive your payment close to your expiry date, please contact us by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info and we can help you ensure there is no lapse in your subscription.