In September we will be continuing to use Tapestry as our assessment tracker, to record our children’s knowledge, skills and learning dispositions. It is a consistent and reliable way of demonstrating progress through the EYFS.

The statements within Tapestry correlate with Development Matters and the new Birth to 5 Matters that reflect an ‘age related expectation’. Tapestry recognises the importance and values the 'how' of learning and so the characteristics of effective learning and levels of well-being and involvement are recorded too.

Through interactions with the children we are able to build a rich and accurate understanding of each child across all aspects of learning and development. Our assessments are meaningful and impact on our children’s learning and development as we use them to inform our children’s next steps which are personalised and challenging. Our observations then inform the assessments we make on Tapestry as children approach the end of each range milestone. We bring our knowledge of a child together to make a summative assessment about where they are in relation to key developmental milestones.

Learning Stories

 We use the electronic online Learning Stories provided by Tapestry to record the observations and then use them to support our ongoing assessments. These observations can then be shared with families. You can share all the wonderful things you do with your child at home using Tapestry, by uploading via the website or App.

We love to show you all the wonderful things your child has been doing throughout the day, but we also know and value the importance of actually being with the children and not having an iPad in between us. Therefore, some weeks you will have more observations than others, because we have been engaging and playing and didn’t want to stop the flow to take a photograph. We also welcome contributions from yourselves on your child’s progress and development, so if there are activities they have taken part in outside of school that you would like us to know about, please upload these onto Tapestry, as well as any pieces of writing or work on numbers they may choose to do at home.

You will be given an access code to Tapestry when your child joins our school to see their learning story at home. At the end of Reception their learning story can be downloaded for you to keep and treasure.

Observation Examples 

Making a kite:

Harlan said he wanted to make a kite, at first, he asked me if I could do it, I suggested he had a try himself first. He said he wasn't sure how to make a diamond, he then went to the shapes to find one to draw around, he chose a cube and said 'I will turn it so it is a diamond'. He then cut it out and found some string to attach.

Communication and language.

Physical Development.

Mathematics.

Expressive Arts and Design.

Growing Vegetables

George was gifted some vegetable seeds and was excited to use his new propagation tray to get the seeds started. He has been looking at them every day and making sure to water them. George described the cucumber as growing fast and the biggest so far.

Speaking.

The Natural World.

Maths.

Characteristics of Effective Learning: Playing and Exploring, Active Learning, Creating and Thinking Critically.

Maps

Today we had a practice of the fire alarm. Then during choosing time Daniel chose to draw a map of the school and in each class, he drew a fire alarm. He told me. “We need a plan of the school to know how it all works, there is fire alarms in all the classrooms. When the alarm goes off you stand up and get out you walk to where it’s says your name in the playground”.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development.

Physical Development.

Expressive Arts and Design.

Characteristics of Effective Learning.

Building a Bunker

Harlan “We are building a bunker, cos on you tube they build real bunkers and they find fossils from dinosaurs, we might find treasure.”

George "We building 5f or 6ft building it down”

Jacob “All three of us are digging together."

Personal, Social, Emotional Development.

Physical Development.

Understanding the World.

Characteristics of Effective Learning: Active Learning.