The Marazon approach combines learning through play with a rigorous assessment system, reports Mary Evans
An Oxfordshire nursery is championing an American educational system which goes back to basics by encouraging children to learn through play while using modern assessment techniques to plan future activities.
Laura Oliver came across the Marazon system when working in the child development centre on an American air-force base in England. When she became manager of the Manor House Nursery, Merton, near Bicester last May, she introduced the system there and it is now the only civilian nursery in the UK using this approach.
The Marazon system is the brainchild of Renee Marazon, a teacher from Toledo, Ohio. She created it in response to her growing unease at lecturing her teaching students to focus on the whole child's development while asking them to set goals that could only be measured by specific child behaviours.
The catalyst came when she asked her students to plan an activity for pre-school children setting at least two objectives. She felt the activities, such as mixing colours, and exploring scents, were developmentally appropriate, but the objectives, such as recognising that red and blue make purple and matching pairs of scents, were stifling.
'I felt that the demanding nature of behavioural objective terminology was developmentally inappropriate. I was opposed to objectives that state children "will" co-operate, initiate and so on,' says Ms Marazon.
'I decided that a developmental objective, like developmentally appropriate practice, would begin with the child - not with the activity, skill or behaviour, nor with curriculum content, a theme or even with a project. The language of this developmental objective would not be demanding; instead it would be nurturing.'
Although Ms Marazon only formulated her educational philosophy in the early 1990s it is now widely used in the US and in the child development centres on air force bases worldwide.
There is a raft of terminology attached to the system but in essence it allows children to explore and learn through play while providing practitioners with an assessment framework. They observe the children, collect and interpret assessment data and use that to plan future activities as well as producing evidence to share with parents.
Ms Oliver says, 'I never liked the worksheet approach but I love the way with Marazon the children are having fun and learning from their own experience. It focuses on the child.
'It acknowledges that children develop at different rates and at different rates in different areas. When we set an activity, the children explore and learn. When we mix colours we don't say, "You've got to make purple or green. You've got it wrong." I don't want any child feeling, "I am four, and I can't do this." I want them to learn at their own rate. We don't force them.'
The system is presented in a series of manuals carrying forms for observations, assessments and planning which can also be used for staff training. Helen Billington, who has learned the Marazon approach since joining the nursery, says, 'Where I worked previously everything was designed to test something. This is much better as the children learn at their own pace. It is surprising how quickly they pick things up. This is child-centred and you very soon get a sense of their individual characters.'
A study of the Marazon system by the University of Toledo explains that each week a Marazon practitioner selects six target children who will help guide and inform the planning process for that week. For example, a Marazon teacher who has no interpretations of a child's language development, yet knows the child likes sport, can develop a plan of action that supports reading using books about sports.
Once activities are planned for the target child in a particular domain, two additional activities are designed to meet the needs of the whole class. All these activities are open to all children and always address all six domains. So, you design 18 activities (six domains times three activities equals 18 activities). These activities are implemented for one week and assessed, after which six new target children are selected and 18 new activities designed and so on.
The planning process for subsequent weeks is continually connecting children's interests by forwarding and building on the emerging needs of individual children and the group.
More information
For more information about the Marazon system and support products visit the website at www.marazon.com or e-mail the publisher at mapsforlife@toledolink.com . Mailing address is MAPS for Life, 29,336 Belmont Lake Road, Perrysburg, OH 43551, United States. Telephone (419) 661-1945.