Designed for use in both mainstream and specialist provision, Tapestry software has been carefully designed to reduce paperwork and workload, assist the development of each school’s provision, and build and maintain meaningful relationships with parents and carers.
Enhancing home-school relationships
Children reveal different aspects of their learning at home and at school, so staying connected with individual families strengthens the school community as a whole and deepens a class teacher’s knowledge about each child.
Using photos, videos, and other supporting materials uploaded to Observations, teachers, along with the child’s parents or carers, ‘weave’ the story of a child’s development, sharing the learning that’s happening in the school and at home.
This two-way communication helps build and maintain meaningful relationships: parents’ input is truly valued and educators’ knowledge of children is strengthened, enabling a shared understanding of how every child can reach their full potential.
Tapestry’s Memos tool allows you to communicate with parents and carers, sharing news and updates including PowerPoint attachments, pictures and videos. You can also share information via our Documents feature, uploading resources, food menus, or term dates and event details to send to parents.
Assessment, planning and monitoring progress
Tapestry allows in-situ collection of information to inform educators and leaders of children’s progress and to influence adjustments in each school’s provision.
The 2021 EYFS reforms made a welcome move away from data-centred assessment towards a child-centred approach. Following conversations with the authors of Development Matters and the Birth to 5 Matters guidance, Tapestry implemented the new Flags system and the Areas of Concern screen, reflecting the ethos of these documents.
The article ‘Using Observations and Reflections with the Areas of Concern Screen’ shows monitoring in the early years in action.
The approach in primary focuses on recording the coverage and mastery of National Curriculum subjects. Teachers can record and view learning outcomes covered, and check the depth of understanding for individuals and groups of children.
Each school can create their own custom tier-based assessment system, setting how many tiers they would like, and what they’re called.
The tiers are used to set each child’s Maintained Achievement Points (MAP), which is the tier teachers expect a child to be assessed in throughout the year for each subject. Teachers can use this to check the child is where they expect them to be or whether they are working above or below this.
Easy-to-follow charts enable teachers to track attainment points, monitor progress, and see areas of the curriculum still to be covered, as well as the impact of absences on children’s attainment scores. This information can help teachers plan their lessons and individual interventions more effectively.
All this informs Tapestry’s Reports feature. With templates for EYFS and KS1 and KS2, teachers can create central, downloadable reports with a consistent format throughout the school.
These are accessible to the senior leadership team, who can make necessary adjustments, and can be shared with parents/carers.
Both EYFS and KS1/KS2 can benefit from Bespoke Frameworks, giving schools the flexibility to create, upload and share their own curriculum, assessment framework, or milestones, capturing learning and reflecting on progress in a way that works for their learning community.
Supporting your SEND provision
Tapestry is the exclusive online home of Cherry Garden Branch Maps. Combining their teaching experience with building on parts of the Routes for Learning framework, Ofsted Outstanding specialist school Cherry Garden created this child-centred approach demonstrating lateral progress to support educators working with children with learning differences and disabilities (SEND).
Our development team collaborated with the school to add the framework to Tapestry, designing an interactive orchard which celebrates each child’s progress with educators and families.
In addition, the Bespoke Flags and Bespoke Frameworks features enable educators to monitor progress linked to the Engagement Model or specific outcomes from a child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
Independent learning from anywhere
To support teachers’ understanding of their children’s progress, and plan accordingly, Tapestry includes the Activities feature. Create, store and send bespoke activities for groups of children or an individual child, responding to their unique learning needs.
These are shared with families to try at home, supporting playful parental involvement in children’s development. Parents can create an observation to show their child’s experience of the activity.
Child Login pairs well with Activities for older children, allowing teachers to set up their Tapestry account so children can log in from specific devices at school or home, encouraging autonomous learning, and sharing of meaningful feedback.
Staff wellbeing and reflective practice
Education team members worked with our developers to design Reflections, a space to share thoughts and actions, facilitating reflective practice.
Reflections provides plenty of benefits, and can be used to fit each school’s own approach to reflective practice:
- They help with planning changes to provision after identifying where extra support is needed for children. Educators can record the impact of changes and discuss online within the same form.
- Staff can follow the curriculum design journey together, sharing ideas and knowledge, and linking previous and future observations/reflections to create a timeline.
- They enable leaders and staff teams to identify areas for professional learning together, allowing them to tailor training and support for individuals and teams.
- They support the development of personal reflective practice, recording ideas and initiatives and the impact on their pedagogy.
Discover all Tapestry Features and request a free no-obligation trial today, or contact customer.service@eyfs.info to discuss your particular needs.
