Resource for activities

Need ideas for activities for children of different ages? The website www.pecentral.org has a huge variety of lessons that can be used/modified by instructors and therapists. We use a lot of those for intervention with a very specialized group, and the website is great to give us a general idea of how to start and how we can propose some of the motor skills. It's a great resource for everybody who works with movement somehow.

Cues for motor skill learning

A little while ago a student came to my office to ask me what he could do to help his students learn the correct "stances" for martial arts. I don't know anything about martial arts, but I know a little about how children learn skills. So I ask him to show me what he was talking about. Basically, he showed me a couple positions that were not difficult (for an adult), but were also not symmetric or made a lot of sense. He said he had a lot of problems with feet placement - while he would fix one child's foot, the other foot moved out of the correct position, and so on. I told him to use two color tapes (one for the front and another for the back foot) and tape them on the ground exactly in the position that the child should be, so they would have to step on the tapes instead to think of the stances. He doubted a bit but said he'd try. In a week, he came back to tell me the "miracle"- he didn't have to waste any more time on the stances, they all got it!

I wish I was the one performing "miracles" all around, but unfortunately, I only used a very old technique to help with skill learning: The use of cues (or labels). Cues are cognitive strategies that describe a particular aspect of a concept or skill (usually the key aspect) and enable children's performance by enhancing attentional focus, facilitating information processing, and assisting with retention and retrieval of information. It's an extremely easy and even fun concept to use with children, and the benefits are gigantic. But to my surprise, very few people use them or even know the benefits. I've seen countless of therapists and instructors describe movements with a lot of detail and demonstrate skills without even specify what the child should be paying attention to or simplifying the concept (imagine creating a cue!).

The most commonly used cues are of the verbal type, but in motor skill learning we can use visual and kinesthetic cues. In my classes, every time students have to propose an activity, I ask them to 1) identify the critical aspects of the movement  and 2) create different types of cues for each aspect. It helps them understand the movement and to think of what is meaningful for a child, too. Here is a simple example of using hula hoops so the kids now where their feet go. Easy, huh?

What about you? Do you use cues for learning? What are some that work?

Motor Development videos

A couple years ago I found some great online videos on Motor Development and I've been using them in classes since that time. Dr. Marcio Oliveira, the Assistant Dean for Educational Innovation at University of Maryland (and a great investigator in the field) created a series of short videos that portray different topics in motor development, including two interviews with Dr. Jane Clark that are just fantastic! She is also from University of Maryland. Dr. Oliveira is an advocate for innovation in higher ed teaching and he has been doing great things - and I'm still hoping for many more!

Here is a list of the topics (click on it for the link):

Reflexes and spontaneous movements
Prenatal development: The course of early development
Reflexes assessments
Perceptual development: Kinesthetic
Perceptual development: Visual & auditory
Epigenetics in MD
Nature x nurture in MD
Fundamentals of MD
The mountain of MD: A metaphor
The mountain of MD: Periods
Constraints in motor development
Career paths in motor development

Bronfenbrenner's model and motor development

Motor development is caused by the interaction of two things: Biology (nature) and the Environment (nurture). We have very little two do about biology, but a lot to do with the environment. As professionals in the field of motor development (teaching and/or rehabilitating), we belong to a very small fraction of the all the systems that influence an individual. I like to look at environmental influences from the view of Bronfenbrenner, who listed all  systems that influence a person's development in order of proximity and hierarchy. The diagram above exemplifies that - a person is in the middle of the circle, and is surrounded by aspects of the microsystem or "close" settings, or contexts in which the individual lives, such as health services, family and school. The mesosystem explains how those settings of the microsystem relate and interact to each other. The exosystem are social settings that are not directly influenced by the individual, and the macrosystem refers to the culture that surrounds the individual and all other systems. The chronosystem is influenced by time from a larger perspective.

With this model, it's pretty easy to figure out who we are and what we became as we look at all other systems that influenced us - from a personal and a motor development perspective. For example - why did we choose the sports and motor activities we did? What were the things that we were good at - and what are our physical choices now? But the big question is: As professionals dealing with motor competence, how can we actively use the Bronfenbrenner's theory in our applied experiences? I don't know of any right or wrong ways to do that, but I believe that when both assessing and intervening, we can (and should) account for the environment. For example, with assessment of motor development status, it is possible to look at motor/physical proficiency aspects but also investigate aspects of the microsystem that may be related (for good or bad) with that motor development status. I'll be talking about some assessments that can help us understand specific environmental contexts here.

With intervention, it gets a little less "standardized" and more applicable - it is important that clinicians and teachers are in touch with a child's family, school, and other settings that directly or indirectly influence motor development status. It's common practice for therapists to make recommendations to parents on how they can supplement some of the practice at home or other environments. Teachers can do the same. But more than trying to find ways to potentially change the environment for better motor development outcomes, I believe that understanding motor development from a multifaceted perspective is the first things that needs to be clear. When we look at the diagram above everything is pretty reasonable and easy to understand, but when we look at a child, are we really him/her in the center of a much bigger picture?