At Little Owls we believe that communication between home and a child’s setting is vital to supporting a child’s progress. We do this is a number of ways. Firstly, we offer you a home visit when your child starts so that Parents have the opportunity to tell us all about your child. On drop off or pick up you can talk to us about your child on a day-to-day basis; this can be done by telephone if necessary. You can make an appointment to see your child’s key person without your child present at a mutually convenient time. All staff conduct frequent observations of your child to check progress and plan how we can meet your child’s individual needs. All observations and assessments are kept on our online learning journey, Tapestry, which each Parent is given access to when their child joins us. You can also use Tapestry to share your child’s experiences outside Little Owls with us which is invaluable in us understanding their interests. We ask that you share the assessments with any other settings and carers you may use for your child and we hope they will similarly share their knowledge about your child with us; we can then all work together.
During each half term all children are a ‘focus child’ for a week and during this time all the staff spend extra time observing and focusing on their progress. We then discuss these children at our staff meeting to plan for their development and to ensure we have a shared approach. We then invite Parent(s) to have a Progress Check Chat which gives you the opportunity to talk to your child’s key person without your child present and to discuss their insights from home, bringing together a view of the whole child. We will then share a summary of this on Tapestry.
If your child is with us when they are two years old a statutory progress check will be done with your child and we will have a meeting to share this with you. With your consent we will also share this progress record with your child’s health visitor. When your child leaves Little Owls we do a handover meeting about each child between us and the Reception teacher at Haslingfield Primary School. If your child is going to another school we will liaise with their teacher to arrange a handover.