Podcast Assignment

 

Scientific and Creative Learning: An out of classroom learning environment

                For the group podcast assignment I was in a group with Tara Simons, Sarah-Jayne Beynon and Sheridan Wood. For our podcast assignment, me, Sheridan, Tara and Sarah-Jayne decided that we wanted to do our podcast on the Waterfront Museum in Swansea.

"The National Waterfront Museum tells the story of industry and innovation in Wales, now and over the last 300 years." (Museums Wales)

                Once all four of us had some spare time, we went down to the museum, where we walked ourselves around, took pictures and videos and looked at the different activities.   We decided we would only use Sheridan's phone for this so it would be easier to upload on to the computer  to put it all together.  On our first visit to the museum, we wanted to ask a member of staff a series of questions to help u with our podcast but as no one was available at the time we arranged to come back within a week. Sheridan took the phone number so she could phone and arrange at time that suits them best, as well as us.

                On our second visit to the Waterfront Museum, we spoke to one of the gentlemen that worked there called Ian Smith. We found a nice place to interview him, I interviewed Ian Smith while Sheridan videoed the interview. I asked him three questions. Once we had finished Sheridan went home to add the video to the podcast that we had already started. As we couldn't upload the video, we had to record it from Sheridan's phone to the laptop. As the recording was bad, we had to repeat what Ian Smith said, so people could understand what was said.

                We needed to finish our podcast, so me, Tara and Sarah-Jayne went over Sheridan's. While at Sheridan's we searched for research on museums and on how the government helps museums, concentrating more on the welsh government.  While at Sheridan's we all took it in turns to video ourselves saying certain information on the Waterfront Museum as well as voice over's on certain pictures to explain what they are and what they do.  We also explained how it helped children with their innovation skills.

                 I did some research on the Welsh Government site and found out that the National Museum Wales was founded by Royal Charter in 1907 and now has 7 sites, one of these including the Waterfront Museum. All 7 of the sites are free entry which has had an impact on all of the museums including the Waterfront Museum. Once I researched all the information that I needed too, I videoed myself on Sheridan's laptop and added it to the podcast.  (Welsh Government, 2014)

Here is the link to our Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTZb9rD0AgI&feature=youtu.be

Bibliography

Museums Wales. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2015, from National Waterfront Museums: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/swansea/about/

Welsh Government. (2014, November 19). Retrieved February 18, 2015, from National Museum Wales: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/cultureandsport/museumsarchiveslibraries/acnmw/?lang=en

Peer review of animation assignments

As part of our assignment, we had to present our animation in front of the education futures class and choose one animation that you would like to review in your blog.

 

The animation that I am going review is Sam and Sam's animation.

 

The reason why I picked this animation was because I thought it was one of the best and it was one animation that stayed in my head. The animation was made up of little balls of clay, blue and green, the animation starts off with one blue ball and one green ball. These two balls end up fighting and then they both call in their 'army's' which is about 6 balls of clay of each colour, these balls of clay start jumping around and going to war with each other until they form a big ball which then changes in to a globe, showing that it is better to work together then to work against each other. The message I got from the animation was that world peace is what we need and that working together is better instead of doing on your own or working against each other. There was no sound effects or talking throughout the animation just backing music but I think this was enough as if there was sound effects that it would catch your attention.  I also think the backing music was perfect and set it off perfectly which was 'Better Together' by Jack Johnson.

You seen in the animation that there was a lot of work in to it and also the skills that both Sam's had was definitely shown in throughout the animation. Sam and Sam didn't use Zu3D like a lot of the other students including myself. They used an app off a mobile phone called Stop Motion Studio. I know that with talking to Sam and Sam that they have difficulties using these app but it was nice to hear the tell us the difficulties they had and how they overcome them. For me, I don't think this could have been any better, it was a simple looking animation but a effective one, which expressed its message perfectly.

 

Here is the address for Sam Whites Blog to see the final animation:

http://samwhitep132490.blogspot.co.uk/

Animation Blog - Evalution

While doing our blog, Tara and I hit many hurdles that we either had to jump over or that we had cut out and think something else up. To start off, our main problem was that we didn’t think of a story board before we started our animation, we only thought of a couple seconds and thought as we went through, were I think that if we would have planned it before hand, that not only would the animation be more clear that it would have been easier for myself and Tara while doing the animation. If we would have planned it better also it would have run smoother for us. When it comes to the characters, we already knew that we wanted to use clay but yet again if we planned it better than we could have decided if there was another material that would have helped us or that would have been better with the animation that we were making.

Within our animation, we wanted to try and show the difference in days with our backgrounds and lighting but because we changed rooms half way through the animation it meant that we had different lighting in the beginning compared to the end. With moving the clay, we had to be very careful with our shadowing, which was really hard to towards the end of the animation because the day had gone to night we had to turn on the light but then this changed the lighting all over again as well as putting our shadows in the frames.

As we were worried we wouldn’t have enough time and started without really planning things out, I think that if we did actually plan a storyboard we would have thought about the materials more, where we might not have used clay. Even though was good as we needed our characters to move around a lot when moving them too much we ended up with the characters falling apart which meant it took us more time as we had to model them back to what they looked like in the beginning.

Another problem that we had was as it was a group assignment, when me and Tara were trying to find the time together it was becoming more difficult as we were very rarely free at the same time, which meant that were spending a lot of time on it over many days when we could fit in as were if it was an individual task it would have been a lot easier for myself as well as Tara as we could have done the animation when we were free instead of relying on each other.

Another problem we faced was the sound, we recorded music from YouTube for our intro and credits so we recorded it on Audacity saved it to my laptop and then put it on to Zu3D but what we didn’t know was once we tried to play it on a different computer that it wouldn’t play due to the actual recording not being on the computer.

I think that if I was going to make an animation myself again, I would make sure that I plan it out better and I would make sure that I had a story board in place before I decided what materials to use and what I would want in the background. I don’t think I would use Zu3D again, it is designed for children and I think with an adults head it made it a lot harder to use.

In this picture, I am remodelling 'Roxanne' because when we kept moving her she kept falling apart.

 

 

Animation Blog - The final animation

After over 800 frames, a lot of work and dedication, re-modelling 'Roxanne' and 'Royston' we final have a final animation. Once we had taken all the frames we needed and put the sound in were it would fit. It was last minute that we decided to add the music 'Roxanne' by The Police as it was missing something by putting in this music it made our story come more to life.

There is a certain part of the song which we believed fit in well with our story that is why there is only a certain part of the song. This part of the song was:

"Roxanne you don't have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don't care if it's wrong or right"

Just with this line in the animation, it made more sense of our animation and was very apt. To add this song in, we had to record it from our mobile phones on a application called audacity, which we then saved in it and out it on to Zu3D. The sound affects that we used on the animation  come from YouTube were we recorded them off our phones then straight on to Zu3D.

This picture is from the final scene, this is showing how far 'Roxanne' has come from the beginning scene.

Animation Blog - Step Five

To make animation come to life there was certain objects that we needed to use that we wouldn't be able to make out of clay, the main objects that we use were two toy cars, trying to make these out clay was impossible and would have been very time consuming. The reason why we used two toy cars was to get the impression that it was two different people and 'Roxanne' was involved in even though the first car the person that was in it never showed their identity.

The other main element to make our animation come to life was the sound, we added in sound effects, when she was walking, also when the cars were driving we had the sound effect of a car driving and the horn tooting. We put 'Roxanne' by The Police at the beginning of the animation and at the end.




 
 

Animation Blog - Step Four

Within our animation we had three different backgrounds to create three different scenes. The first background we used was the orange brick affect. This was to give off the effect that she was down a alley way or a lane, to make it look more real, we added props in that Tara had made which were the wheelie bin, black bags and alcohol bottles. This was the scene that we wanted to show people how 'Roxanne' lived on the street and slept on the street where she could.

 

The second scene we used was the night scene with the shops and the lamp posts, we used this background to try and show the audience that it was going from day to night while she was driving around in the car. This scene was not in our animation long as we just wanted to give off the illusion that it was night time. Even though it was on black paper to show it was night time, we also wanted it to show how much trouble 'Roxanne' was in and her feelings that is why we only used white chalk instead of using all colours to make it colourful.

The final background that we used was the garden background, with this background we wanted to show how bright the colours were, to show that 'Roxanne' had started a fresh and the colours resembled how happy she was and how better her life was now that she had met 'Royston'. It showed her happy as can be watering plants which was her new hobby.

 

 

Animation Blog - Step Three

To start off the animation we needed to have set our scenes up and get the camera in place. To make sure that the camera wouldn’t move we used blue tac to keep it in place, this would make it easier for us. We couldn’t make all of our props so we did have two toy cars that we incorporated in different scenes. While making the scenes we did struggle with ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Royston’ as they were both made out of clay, when we moved them a lot they tended to break especially when we had to make ‘Roxanne’ sit down, so after certain scenes we did have to either mould them back together or take them apart and start again.

 

As the scenes went on, we were thinking of certain scenes off the top of our heads that we wanted to incorporate that we thought would be an better idea then what we had already discussed and looking back at the animation now it think we were right. Throughout the animation, we wanted to show the audience of ‘Roxanne’ moving from scene to scene to make it look like days were passing to make it look like we were looking at ‘Roxanne’s’ life for longer than just a day.

Animation blog - Step Two

Stage two of our stop-motion animation

Once Tara and I had decided our topic for our animation we needed to think about making our characters so we could make our stop – motion animation come to life. We both decided that it would be best if used play dough/clay so when moving our characters in the animation it would be easier to move and adjust them. At the beginning, we started off with a female character, she was the main character and we named her Roxanne, as we worked through our animation we added in a second character, this character was male and we named him Royston. When it came to making the cast and the props, we decided that I would make the characters and that Tara would make the props like the wheelie bin and black bags.

 

While we were making the characters we also had to think of the plot and the props that we would need to make animation more real. We decided that the story would start off with showing a typical day in ‘Roxanne’s’ life, which would include ‘looking’ for work, drinking and sleeping on the streets down a lane. We knew that we couldn’t just do two minutes of ‘Roxanne’ so this was when we incorporated ‘Royston’. ‘Royston’ would find ‘Roxanne’ sleeping on the streets and want to help her build her life back and get on the straight and narrow. The final scene of stop-motion animation would be showing ‘Roxanne’ over her addiction, and living her life with her new found hobby gardening. The message that we were trying to get across was that everyone needs help once in a while, there is help out and no one is on their own.

Animation Blog - Step One

"Stop Motion Animation is a technique used in animation to bring static objects to life on screen. This is done by moving the object in increments while filming a frame per increment. When all the frames are played in sequence it shows movement. Clay figures, puppets and miniatures are often used in stop motion animation as they can be handled and repositioned easily. " http://www.techopedia.com/definition/109/stop-motion-animation

Once Tara and I had decided we were going to work together, we decided what the best topic for our stop-motion animation would be. We wanted to use a topic that would be affective and would teach the children something useful for life. As students we needed to think outside the box to make sure that the audience would understand our message, this is then when we came up with the idea to do our topic on alcohol abuse. The reason why we chose this topic as we believed it was a well-known problem to people, we also wanted to show the signs to our audience on how a problem can get worse.

 

Alcohol abuse means drinking excessively, drinking more then what the recommended limits of alcohol consumptions. Alcohol abuse can lead to number of health problems which can affect you physical and mentally, such as alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver, inability to work and socialise and destructive behaviours, such as drink-driving.

A problem with alcohol starts with the increase amounts of alcohol you take in. The three main risk categories based on how much you drink, that can be used to help judge your own level of risk, are lower-risk, increasing risk and higher-risk.

 

Sound.....

"Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion." Michael Geisler

I once got told that if you take music from a horror movie that it would no longer be scary... this is very true. Michael Geisler says that music helps express emotion, without there being music you can't hear what anyone is trying to express, or what the feeling the person is trying to give off, or even what scene they are trying to set. With the music it makes your mind think about what will be happeneing next....

Our group praxinoscope.

After being put in to different groups we all got allocated a different camera-less animation to create in our groups. Our group got given the praxinoscope, this consists of a rounded mirror in the centre of a spinning surface with a pictures of animation that gives the illusion the image is moving. The image we chose was an angry bird knocking down the building and knocking over the piggy's.

Even though we didn't finish the image, we tried it out and it looks really good.

My not so great thaumatrope!!!

So as a pretty creative person I thought that when I got given the task to create my own thaumatrope I would do a pretty good job.... Oh how wrong I was. I decided that I wouldn't follow any instructions and try and do it myself, what a bad idea. Even though I was extremely proud of my drawings not happy that I buggered it completely but I still did step by step pictures of my own.

What went wrong?
I think the things that went wrong were my circle was too big, the wholes that I made in the side weren't in the centre and my pictures on both sides weren't level.

Stop-motion animation

What is stop-motion?

 

Stop-animation is a cinematic process, or technique used to make still objects appear as if they are moving. This technique is commonly used in claymotion and puppet-based animation. The objects are brought to life by breaking up the figure's motion into increments and filming one frame of film per increment. Some examples are Chicken run, Wallace and Gromit, Nightmare before christmas and many more.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=646tRxpBRy8

The stop-motion animation that i will be looking in to will be Chicken Run.

Chicken Run was made in 2000 and directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park. The idea come for Chicken Run come from 'Creature Comforts'. The idea for chicken run was decided in 1995 but did not have the funding until 2000 to make it.  Chicken Run was Aardman Animations' first feature length production, which would be executive produced by Jake Eberts, while Karey Kirkpatrick scripted the film with additional input from Mark Burton and John O'Farrell. Chicken Run was first conceived in 1995 by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park. Pathe agreed to finance Chicken Run in 1996 putting their finances into Script Development and Model Design. DreamWorks officially came on board in 1997. DreamWorks beat out studios like Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. and largely won due to the perseverance of DreamWorks co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg; as a company they were eager to make their presence felt in the animation market in an attempt to compete with Disney's dominance of the field.  In December 1997, it was revealed that David Sproxton would produce. DreamWorks secured their first animated feature with the film, and they handled distribution in all territories except Europe, which Pathé handled. The two studios co-financed the film. DreamWorks also retains rights to worldwide merchandising. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120630/

Produced on a $45 million budget, the film was a huge box office hit. To date, it is the highest grossing stop motion animated movie. the film was nomiated in many awards, wining 12 different awards including Satellite awards - Best motion picture or mixed media. During the production of the film, 30 sets were used with 80 animators working along with 180 people working overall. Despite this, one minute of film was completed with each week of filming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Run

Creature comforts is a franchise originating in a 1989 Bristish humourise animated short film of the same name. The film decsribes how the animal feel about living in a zoo, with the voice of the British public speaking as the animals. the film then become a series of television advertisements for the Electricity Board.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_comforts

 

Last Animation I Watched...... Family Guy

The last animation that I watched was Family Guy last night on BBC 3. Family Guy is a series that is on every night on fox and BBC. Family Guy is computerised animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsFVr8JoshI

Family Guy was made 31st January 1999.

What is a learning environment? Mandy Pearce

 

People have different opinons on what a learning environment is. I believe that there is not a specific learning environment, as everyone is different everyone will have there preferred learning environment. For example, some would want their learning environment to be on their own in a small quiet room, whereas others would have to be in company with someone or would have to have noise in the background to help them learn.

 

"Learning environment refers to the diverse physical locations, contexts, and cultures in which students learn." http://edglossary.org/learning-environment/

 

A learning environment can be anywhere, it does not just have to be in a school/college/university setting. A learning environment is where the pupil feels comfortable, confident and somewhere that you would be stimulated. As long as the individual is comfort i believe that, that is best.

 

Blog Introduction

In this blog, I have explained what each context of learning is and given varied information on them all. I've shown how different context of learning benefit different children in different ways.

The Foundation Phase

The Egypt Centre Powerpoint.pptx

The foundation Phase is the statutory curriculum for 3-7 years. The Foundation Phase was introduced for children aged three to four years-of-age in September 2008 and in September 2010 for children aged five to six years-of-age. The final stage of the Foundation Phase, for children aged six to seven years-of-age, will be introduced in September 2011. The 2011-2012 academic year will provide the first national dataset of foundation phase outcomes. The Foundation Phase is designed to meet the developmental needs of all children. It is based on the principle that a developmentally appropriate curriculum should offer sound foundations for children’s learning. It was introduced by the Welsh Government as research evidence which shows that children do not begin to benefit from extensive formal teaching until about the age of six or seven. It combines what was called Early Years Education (for 3 to 5 year-olds) and Key Stage 1 (5 to 7 year-olds) of the National Curriculum.

 The aim with The Foundation Phase was to make the children become interested by being creative, imaginative and by having fun. The Foundation Phase wanted the children learn through discovery, bring in more structured learning, learning through doing so more activities outside, time to repeat things to make sure all ideas concrete, small groups of children with one teacher, reflecting on their learning and six areas of learning. The six key points of the foundation phase are personal, social and emotional care are to be developed through all areas of learning, emphasis on speaking and listening skills for success in reading and writing, increased opportunity for children to be in valued in creative an and expressive activity, focus on observation, increase the use of outdoors as an learning environment and balance between child initiated activities and adult prompted learning. This frame works set out the curriculum and outcomes under seven areas of learning. Each area of learning, educational programme sets out what children should be taught and the outcomes. The Foundation Phase has seven areas of learning which are personal and social development, language, literacy and communication skills, maths development, knowledge and understanding of the world, physical development, creative development and welsh language development.

 It is still early in the implementation of the Foundation Phase to be able to judge fully its impact on the standards being achieved by five to six-year-olds. There is no quantifiable assessment outcomes available to identify its effects. Schools are also implementing a range of other initiatives and strategies designed to improve standards and teaching at the same time. Most schools are amending their curriculum planning to meet the requirements of the Foundation Phase for five to six-year-olds. Where there were good plans in place for the subjects of the National Curriculum, many schools have adapted these effectively to the requirements of the areas of learning.

References

http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/earlyyearshome/foundation_phase/?lang=en

Literacy and the Foundation Phase, September 2011 Estyn

Learning Through Play

Learning through play is a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the world around them. Through play children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments. Most practitioners agree that children learn best through play as young children learn the most during the first 5 years of their life. Play brings about the deepest kind of learning. Learning through play helps the children make sense of the world around them. Piaget once said "All knowledge is tied to action", he was a big believer that children learn better through hands on experience. Learning through play expands certain skills such as cognitive, physical, social and cultural developments. Learning through play develops the child's cognitive development with problem solving, logical thinking and learning language, also develops motor skills, co-ordination, healthy life style, balance, special awareness and building muscles which are all physical development. The children also build their confidence, trust, sharing, social boundaries and learn how to build relationships. Learning through play can involve varied contexts such as dramatic play, sand play, water play, dough and clay play, table top play, small world play and many more. Learning through play lets the children express themselves, explore language freely, exercises choice and making decisions.

With learning through play you can use them for all sorts of national curriculum lessons such as for maths instead of putting the children in front of an exercise book you can get some different shaped containers and sand and get the children to see how much sand is in each pot, the volume of each pot etc. For history or English the children could make up a play for a book their reading or about the Tudors, this does not only get them engaged in the lesson but gets them thinking and more motivated. In play there is no such thing as fail, so this builds the children's self-esteem which is very important at a young age. Young children naturally decide to play, they create their own rules and goals and control materials, people and time. this enables their confidence and self brief to thrive, which in turn adds to a state of emotional security, the more secure the children feel, the higher their level of cognitive development. Learning through play can be as an individual or as a group, it is not the opposite to work as the national curriculum is embedded in to play with the children. Frobel once said "Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul." Frobel always believe that play helped children consider moral matters such as good, evil, right and wrong so for example cops and robbers. At a young age play is very important for the child as it develops varied skills that they will need in the future.

References

Bruce. T (1996) Helping young children to play, London: Sage

http://www.froebelweb.org/web7001.html

http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/foundation_stage/learning_through_play_ey.pdf

Ward. S (2013) Third Edition, A student's guide to educational studies Abingdon : Routledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_through_play

Forest School

Forest school was adapted from Sweden in the 1950's and has developed throughout other Scandinavian countries.  Forest school's only started in Wales in 2000. Froebel , Montessori and McMillan are all believers of the benefits of learning in the natural environment and insisted that children need to play, to experience the space and to develop their skills. Forest school is based outside and lets the children explore and experiment. Initially projects run from their own playing fields allowing the children to become comfortable with an outdoor approach to education and play whilst in familiar surroundings. It allows to base a relationship around trust and self exploration. Once a group is established in the woodland and routines are set up the project develops through a child led approach with opportunities for projects being taken back to the indoor setting to be continued.

Forest school is learning that allows the environment to do teaching, which lets the children explore and gain their confidence in a outside environment. It is a different environment to the usual classroom setting where you can still learn all of the national curriculum subjects in an unusual and inspiring environment. Forest schools teach in a holistic way, all subjects get taught in one, instead of them being separate. Forest school's philosophy is to encourage and inspire the children, teach engaging and motivating tasks and to develop the children's personal, social, health and emotional skills. The forest school has a programme called The Seed-To-Tree Programme, this is a comprehensive six step programme, where the children, teachers and local community all come together and develop a community owned wild space project through the development of local woodland. Every child that goes to the school plants a tree, a legacy for the future.

The six steps of The Seed-To-Tree Programme are Step 0-Nursery Nature Trail which is an introduction step for the children in the nursery class, this introduces the children to the importance of the woods and the nature, which gives them time to explore and experience the outside environment. Step 1-Sowing Seeds, which is for the reception class and year 1, which entails the children looking for acorns, and 'test' them to find out which one has the best success rate for growing.  Step 2-Minding and Mulching, by this time the children's trees have turned in to miniature trees, this step focuses on how they look after the environment and growing things. Step 3-Global Kinship, this step gives them an understanding of the rainforest. Step-4 Destination woodland, this is where the children are in their final year and return to their trees and acorns. They listen to stories about global warming an relate it to their trees. Step 5, the final step, Tree Rescue, this is the emotional step where the children reflect on their journey through forest school.

Forest school teaches the children about personal exploration, learning self motivation, self-esteem and confidence. It enables skills to be transferred and developments to become well-known in to children's everyday lives. They do a variety of activities with the children such as fires, cooking, healthy eating, games, making rope bridges, learning about tools and practising skills and many more.

references

http://www.forestschools.com/what-happens-at-a-forest-school/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_schools

http://www.forestschoolwales.org.uk/

Knight (2011) Forest School For All, London: Sage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpJ1ta-4rMg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJzhUAUfaeE

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori

After studying maths, science and medicine in University of Rome and realised that medicine was not for her, Maria Montessori worked with women and children for 10 years when she realised that she had more of an interest in children with disabilities. After working with teachers, she went back to university to study education and anthropology. Maria Montessori began to develop her philosophy and methods in 1897, attending courses in pedagogy at the University of Rome and reading the educational theory of the previous two hundred years. In 1906, Montessori set up a nursery in San Lorenzo slum; it was the first children’s house as Montessori had no money she had to do all the work herself. From the beginning, Montessori based her work on her observations of children and experimentation with the environment, materials, and lessons available to them. She frequently referred to her work as "scientific pedagogy". Montessori’s main priority was the children’s health; she developed her own resources which are still used today. Maria liked to encourage the children to look after the classroom, environment and facilities that were in the classroom. In 1912, Maria travelled around the world to teach and opened up her first American school. In over 100 countries there are 22,000 Montessori schools including one in Swansea called ‘The Children’s room’. Maria was also the first teacher to advocate the importance of the first 6 years of life. Unfortunately, Maria Montessori passed away in 1952, but her work and theories still got used.

Montessori had three six year periods which she liked to call the sensitive periods. The absorbent mind which is 0-6 years old, childhood which is then 6-12 years old and adolescence which is 12-18 years old, all of these are subdivided. Montessori had key principles that she used such as freedom to  work and move around within guidelines, more than one age group in one class, scaffolding, children encouraged to work at their own pace, children are observed as an individual and groups, strict rules and promoting self discipline in Montessori environments. Maria said the environment of the classroom was important for the children, she had all children sized furniture so they did not feel intimidated and so it was more comfortable for them. There was no grading system so the children did not feel categorised, the children were allowed to explore. Still to this day, many Montessori schools design their programs with reference to Montessori’s model of human development from her published works, and use pedagogy, lessons, and materials introduced in teacher training derived from courses presented by Montessori during her lifetime. One of Maria Montessori's most famous quotes was "The greatest sign of success for a teacher....is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." researched from Search Quotes.

References  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFwH5QlYoY

http://www.mariamontessorischools.co.uk/

http://www.mariamontessori.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

http://www.searchquotes.com/search/Maria_Montessori/