Wentworth Nursery School
How Tapestry helps Wentworth Nursery School to support parental engagement
Wentworth Nursery School is an Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ state-maintained setting for 2-4 year olds which opened in 1951. Wentworth has a long tradition of valuing parental engagement, developing strong connections with families and being part of its community.
Headteacher Farzana Chowdhury shared the practice and pedagogy at Wentworth Nursery School, and how they use Tapestry to support them.
Building trust and engaging families
A sense of belonging is central to the ethos at Wentworth. It begins with being representative of their community, with many staff members living in the local area. The team care passionately about their community and the families within it. This helps to build and sustain trusting relationships with parents and carers. Practitioners use Tapestry to communicate children’s experiences with their families right from the start, promoting parental engagement and nurturing confidence:
Tapestry is so helpful when children and families are settling in with us. We use it to share small video clips of what their child is doing and what they are interested in at nursery. The parent can see how secure their child feels, and this builds that trust. And we know when children can feel that the parents trust the process then they’re probably going to start to feel comfortable themselves.
Keeping families connected with their children’s learning, and understanding why this matters, is seen as a vital part of partnership with parents. The team help children and families to be excited about learning by sharing achievements:
Often when their child achieves an amazing milestone, their parent can’t be there. Sharing their journey through Tapestry is the next best thing to being there, and that’s a gift we can enable families to have.
Staff at Wentworth expand their knowledge of each child by truly valuing input from parents and carers. They encourage parental engagement in their child’s learning by sharing ideas and showing the learning that happens in the setting. Tapestry is one of the tools that enables them to do this:
When we’re focusing on something with a child that they could also be doing at home, we send a quick video on Tapestry, so the parent/carer is exposed to this approach and this enables them to do the same with their child at home.
Reducing workload to facilitate joyful learning
‘Joyful learning’ is at the heart of provision at Wentworth. This is built on practitioners asking ‘why are we doing this’ (activity, interaction, observation) and it’s supported by team planning discussions to ensure children’s experiences relate to their interests and enable them to make progress. Most importantly, it is about taking time to tune into each child. Farzana explains how Tapestry facilitates this approach:
One of the most important things we can give children is time. This means reducing staff workload. Tapestry helps us to do this – we can celebrate children instantly and record their journey without spending time cutting and sticking photos into books. The fewer barriers we have between the practitioner and the child the better. A tablet can be used quickly and discretely when needed to film or take a photo.
At Wentworth, children are encouraged to engage with these videos and photos of themselves. They talk about their achievements and what they did, which supports their language development and metacognition.
Children can see their experience and they have the opportunity to choose what they want to talk about or which picture to add to their online journal. It all fits like a puzzle for them when they see the video or photo of themselves, and they’re more likely to use the language that they’ve been exposed to.
Keeping in touch when you’re in a leadership role
Being headteacher means Farzana isn’t able to join in with the learning all the time. Staying connected to each child’s development, their interests, and their family, is really important to her. Conversations with staff are key – the planning meetings are a place where knowledge is shared. Farzana also uses Tapestry to keep her up to date and to connect with families, always encouraging and valuing parental engagement:
I check in on Tapestry every day. It’s a very quick way for me to have an understanding of children’s learning. I can interact with parents as well, I can see the comments they have made, and I can respond. It has that personal touch, which I think is a really useful way of interacting with parents. It feels safe and it feels professional.
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