MOTORING PROGRAMME

INTRODUCTION

THE FOLLOWING ARE COMPONENTS WE HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHEN PLANNING AND EXECUTING A MOTORING PROGRAMME:

(PLEASE READ CAREFULLY)

(xs – means “ times”)

  • Locomotoring: Different ways to move from one place to another using your body
  • Perceptual-motoring development: Perceptual-motoring development is about the development of basic skills or abilities that are regarded as important for the building of an effective and comprehensive foundation for higher and more complexed learning processes.Perceptual development is integrated with movement, cognitive processes and language. These aspects are important as involuntary movements, attentive attention and actions are all dependant on stimuli and understanding of the surroundings. When perceptual development has fallen behind, it can lead to delayed motoring development and vise versa. When cognitive development has fallen behind, perceptual motoring skills will be influenced as well.The workings of the sesnsory input systems and the perceptual-motoring processes, indivudually or together, can affect effective motoring control negtively. We cannot expect learners with delayed development in either of these systems to perform and progress in their motoring development, but if we can eliminate neorological delays, we can develop motoring patterns.
  • Processes involved in perceptual motoring development:

-Recognition: Neorological feedback that something is happening

-Discrimination: The ability to differentiate between different aspects of stimuli.

-Organising: The ability to organise stimuli into meaningful images.

  • Rhythm:Rhythm is defined as the ability to sustain fine and gross motor balance, to move rhythmically and to maintain the balance of the body, and the perception and expression of rhythmic patterns. Rhythm and time is co-dependant of each other and is described as synchronised movement to establish effective movement.
  • Co-ordination: It is the ability the control, co-ordinate and integrate different parts of the body, mussles and main mussle groups that are invilved in the execution of a specific skill/action. Co-ordination involves good perception and enough muscle tone. It is influenced by the ability to contract muscles, response time, muscle tone, tempo of execution, rhythm, etc. and determine the grade of competence of co-ordination control and execution. Co-ordination also has to do with the participation and co-ordination of different body parts and muscle groups which are working antagonistically against each other. It also has to do with the co-ordination of a specific body part and a piece of apparatus, example eye-han, eye-foot, eye-hand-ball, eye-foot-ball, etc.
  • Balance: Balance is the process of integrating sensory information from different sources to plan and execute static and dinamic body positions. Stability is most fundamental aspect in the teaching and executingof an action or movement. It entails maintaining the balance in the relation to the weight of gravitation and the variety of different balance positions.
  • Spatial orientation: It is the ability to manupilate space in your mind. It is the perception of where the body is in space (place and orientation) despite vision. Spatial orientation originates because of a compilation of kinestetic input from the eye muscles and the joints of the body. This ability will enable the learner to understand the different spatial concepts (of himself and of other objects in his surroundings). This ability is combined with the discrimination of different features (colour, shape, etc. – cognitive skills of classification) and organisation (whole vs part, figure-ground, 2D and 3D, etc.) Spatial orientation cannot fully development if a child does not know his body parts, is attentive to his midline and cannot distinguish between left and right.
  • Laterality: Laterality is viewed as the inner feeling of the body’s simmetry. It is the internal consciousness of the body’s symmetry. It is the inner consciousness of left and right, and that the body consist of two sides. Before this feeling is not established, a child cannot have a feeling for his midline, will have difficulty planning spatially, will have poor balance and will not be able to determine his dominant side.

Mathematical problems:

Mathematics is mastered with the first baby steps. The child learns his first concepts of far, close, many, to much, to few, high, low, etc. while playing with blocks, balls and other toys. He learns to internalise these concepts by drawing a relation between many and few, far and close, small and smaller, etc. Whilst handling the toys he masters the concepts when doing and learning on a concrete, repetitive level. He learns there is a logic, order and coherence between objects. He learns with time that concepts like in front, behind, above and under is in relation with movement and position and space, and he also learns it through movement with his body. These concepts start out with being egosentric where I am the centre and change to relationships in space ( objects are relations to each other). He learns to indicate place in space with vocabulary.

Logic plays an important role in the mathematical processes of children. To be able to count, you need number concepts. Number concepts differentiates from counting ( for example, understanding of number 5 is shown by classifying, grouping and arranging in order).

Preparatory Mathematical Teaching:

  1. Bodily orientation
  2. Visual and auditory discrimination
  3. Visual and auditory memory
  4. Perception of shape
  5. Figure-ground discrimination
  6. Position in space
  7. Spatial relations
  8. Sequencing
  9. Analising and synthesis
  10. Rhythms
  11. Eye-hand-co-ordination and fine motoring skills
  12. Development of vocabulary

(Most of these components are included in this programme). It would be wise however if Grade R and grade 1 teachers can re-inforce these components by doing repetitive exercises including different body parts and left and right. Direction and spatial orientation originate from these. Sequencing means that a child can do a number of things, eg. commands or a series of movements.

The origin of Mathematic problems:

Factors within a child:

  1. General health
  2. Sensory disabilities
  3. Speech problems
  4. Variable disabilities
  5. Emotional problems
  6. Perceptualproblems

Perception is the ability of the brain to make contact with the world through the senses. When the brain interprets these impulses from the senses, the perceptual action is concluded by giving meaning to it.

i) Visual and auditory perceptual problems can cause incorrect interpretations. Indistinctness and confusion can be the result when a child see or hear only the part of the whole as the whole.

ii)Confusion in spatial observing can result in problems with construction of numbers, determining distance, observing shapes, transcription, number sequencing, reversing numbers and leaving out of numbers and answers. Shapes and numbers can also not be distingsuished correctly.

iii)When a child experience poor kinestetic perception and poor tactile perception it can lead to problems such as finger agnosty (where a child cannot interpret what he feels) or problems with selecions. It can also leads to confusion in left-right orientation.

iv)When experiencing problems with left-right orientation it might result in problems with copying of figures, transcription and fine motoring co-ordination of the finger muscles. For example the child may have problems catching a ball.

v)Problems with figure-ground perception can lead to poor identification of different shapes, adding and subtraction sums and mutiplication and division sums.

vi)Children experiencing problems with shape consistancy will have difficulty discriminating numbers in different colour, shape or size.

vii)Children experiencing problems with position in space will have difficulty in/out, under / above, infront / behind, left/right , 12/21 or 26/62, etc.

PRESENTATION OF LESSONS

INTRODUCTION OF LESSON:

Divide the class into more or less 5 or 6 groups. Groups can stay the same for the term or can be divided before each lesson. It would also be a good idea to group children according to their abilities. It will reduce frustration amongst them.

Only one lesson has been planned for the 2 sessions of the week. During the first half -hour session, a lot of the time will go into explaining and demonstratingthe activities. During the second session more time can be spent on assisting individual learners.

Start lessons with basic stretching exercises as warm up.. Here are a few examples of basic stretching exercises.

i)Hip and torso: Stand up straight. Stretch arms upwards. Move sideways with upper body while holding your arms upwards. Stay for 2 sec to each side. Do 5 xs to each side.

Stand up straight again. Bend to the front while keeping your back straight like a table. Keep it in this position for 2 sec and straighten again. Repeat 5 xs.

ii)Hamstrings: Bend forward and imagine you are painting your legs from the top to the feet and then every toe. Get up and straighten slowly. Repeat with other leg. Do it 2x.

iii)Quadriceps: Run on the spot for 15 sec while trying to kick your bum while running.

iv)Calves: Give a step forward with one leg.Bend it a little bit while keeping the back leg straight. Both feet’s toes have to point to the front. Push down hard with the heel of the back foot; keep it for 2 sec. Repeat 5x. Do it with the other side as well. Repeat the whole exercise 2 xs with both feet.

v)Back and stomach: Cat movement: Stand on all fours. Push the back upwards and then downwards. Press your chest to the ground and upwards again.

vi)Shoulders: Stretch both arms straight to the sides and start with making small circles, making it bigger and then smaller again. Repeat 2x making circles from small too big and from big too small.

vii)Ankles: Write your name with your toes.

viii)Wrists:Play mercy, shoot stars or make circle movements with your wrists.

ix)Neck: Move your left ear as close as possible to your left shoulder and back. Do the same with the right side as well. Repeat 5 xs to both sides.

Move your head so that your chin touches your chest and back. Move your head now backwards as far as you can and back.

Repeat 5 xs.

Turn your head as far to the left as you can and back and then to the right and back. Repeat 5 xs as well to both sides.

Be sure to use the words left and right as much as possible when instructing.

(CHILDREN MUST KNOW THE WORDS: ekhohlo / ngasekhohlo AND ekunene /ngasekunene)IN ISIXHOSA.

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