Dear Parents and Carers
You will have noticed that when the staff put observations onto your child’s Tapestry Journal there are coloured blocks in the “Flags” section. We thought it would be useful to explain these.
If there are flags on your child’s observations it means that your child is making progress in these areas.
The flags help staff ensure that your child is being given opportunities across the whole curriculum. The purple EYFS 2021 flags are for the Early Years Foundation stage curriculum. This is divided into seven different areas. The yellow flags are so that we can pinpoint exactly where your child is making progress within these areas and where more support is needed.
The CoETL 2021 pink flags tell us how your child learns. We need to know that your child is challenging themselves as well as playing with what they know and making links between their different areas of knowledge. We track how creative they are, how they express themselves and increase their resilience.
The purple Motivation For Learning flags help staff to identify whether your child’s learning experiences are initiated by them, an adult or another child.
We have recently added green Play flags so that we can analyse the type of play your child uses. Most of these are self- explanatory, however, you may be unfamiliar with some of the terms used:
Executive function and self-regulation – mental processes that enable children to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.
Functional play – your child is using play to understand cause-and-effect and better understand the world around them. They may be putting objects together and enjoying toys such as shape sorters and jigsaw puzzles.
Semiotic play – playing with the means of representing and communicating meaning (for example, spoken and written language, drawing, music). This includes babbling, wordplay, mark-making, scribbling, doodling, playing with sounds, rhythms and instruments
Symbolic play – following sequences in play that they have witnessed. A child who follows a sequence when playing (stirring milk and then feeding the doll) will also be able to manage syntax in language (“I need paper and crayons”).
Working memory – a form of memory that allows a child to temporarily hold a limited amount of information at the ready for immediate mental use. It is considered essential for learning, problem-solving, and other mental processes.
If your child has additional needs, they may have an APDR (Assess, Plan, Do, Review) plan. The orange flag will be used on an observation if your child has taken part in an activity prescribed as an outcome by the SENCo. These outcomes are unique to your child.
If you have any further questions about the flags, please do not hesitate to speak to a member of staff.
The Preschool Team
14th December 2021
