Parents of children in Reception with Tapestry or similar...

[bakewellbride]

How many observations are there of your child so far?

At my son's school they didn't start using tapestry until after October half term and since then he's only had one ob. I feel upset and disappointed, trying to work out what the average is before talking to his teacher.

Nearly Christmas and only one thing. 😔it's not right.

Isn't it only 2 weeks since half term

An observation each half term sounds fine. What are you expecting? There's probably another 25+ children in the class, if the teacher is writing individual observations on each child every week she's not going to have any time to actually teach, read with or interact with them.

My child's school have used it all year and there's a class blog each week and a group or class observation every week or two. I think my child has had one individual observation this year.

Just counted ours, since September about 10 individual ones/ with another child + a few more whole class ones.

We would have an update weekly

I take it's like seesaw, and we get photos once or twice a week but nothing written about our kids. (except reminders to bring in toilet roll tubes etc!)

We get a daily photograph but it’s usually several small group shots or a whole class one, then a Friday update outlining what they’ve done that week.

I'm going against the grain - I'd prefer to have far fewer photos of DD4. I really don't like the normalisation of teachers using their smartphones all the time and the constant taking of photos. I don't think its healthy!

I'd think carefully about what you hope to achieve by 'talking to the teacher'.
Sharing photos with parents is an added extra that is nice to have rather than a requirement or contributing to teaching and learning - if it starts creating lots of extra work or hassle for the school with parents moaning about not enough photos then they might stop doing it completely.

Thanks all. Interesting to hear the range.

I am thinking carefully hence posting on here first @Katapolts . I actually used to be a reception teacher so am fully aware of the use of observations in teaching and learning and obs are (or should be) used as an important teaching tool to plan next steps.

I'm sure you also know though that with the new curriculum there's a real focus on reducing written observations. The emphasis is really on teacher's knowledge of the children and on not engaging in time-consuming observations that take away from teaching.

I thought this was going to be about posh schools teaching actual tapestry

About twice a week for while classs and have had a few individual obs. I would rather they spent the time interacting with the kids than uploading photos.

To reassure you, teachers aren't using "their" smartphones. They're work issued, with no sim card in, purely for taking and uploading photos for observation purposes. They're not sitting around on Facebook and taking the occasional snap of a child when they feel like they should be working.

We don't have a Tapestry subscription anymore but I used to take maybe 5 photos a week to fit with the week's theme. So if the theme was teamwork and I spotted a group of children building together I would make it an observation.

Observations are done in real time. They are based on children's work and responses and used to help the teacher adapt their teaching to address misconceptions and move the children on.

Taking teachers away from this to record/write observations down for the benefit of others takes away from teaching time and ultimately the children learn less.

Prioritise teacher's time with the children over paperwork.

Our was weekly and about the whole class. They would add tons of pictures so my son would crop up in some.

There were one or two that we just about him "in the moment" type things, like if he had spent a long time on a construction or worked together on a task.

Consider yourself lucky - we get absolutely nothing and I'm completely blind as to what my DD gets up to in class. Would love even one observation or photo.

We get about one a day from our fab Infants School, some group and some individual. Some of the teachers also use it for us to photo and upload homework. Was a real shock when DS1 moved to (also fab) Juniors and it became one general comment about the whole class a week (we’ve had one individual photo in three years).

Our school has tapestry and seesaw.
But parents need to chill. The child is old m ... eggs and

Old enough to chat about school. Or not. But endless updates aren't the norm in schools

Tbh after a few years those apps are super annoying. The novelty of seeing your kid in school very quickly wears off. If I got an alert on my phone for another photo of my kid reading I would audibly groan. I ended up deleting the app in the end, it wasn’t worth the headache.

Not one!

As a teacher you should know that the teacher is observing and working with your child on a daily basis. Finding the time to put it on an app should not be a priority. If you have a concern about your child's development, talk to them. If your concern is that there isn't more recording on the app then I think this is nonsense tbh.

Our school uses Dojo. We get 2-3 updates per week. Not necessarily individual, but whole class photos and what they've been doing.

I think it varies from school to school. One of our NCT group hasn't had anything since they started in September (different neighbour school to ours).