The physical skills children need to be able to learn Case study

While working with Joe, a very able Year 6 pupil in a mainstream school who had specific learning difficulties (dyslexia), I soon realized that he still had:

■ gross motor control difficulties

■ fine motor control difficulties

■ balance problems

■ body awareness problems

■ spatial awareness problems

■ visual tracking problems.

I immediately set up a program of work that incorporated ten minutes of traditional individual desk learning, but also had a motor time each lesson. This included eurhythmy exercises, a program practiced in Steiner schools (see list of useful addresses and book),and motor activities adapted from Russell (1994) and Nash Wortham and Hunt (1993),specifically aimed to help the problems identified above. Within a couple of months, Joe went from a boy who could not aim a bean bag accurately or follow a passage in a book from left to right without losing his place, to a boy who could throw a bean bag accurately to a person behind him and whose spelling and reading skills improved drastically so that instead of being two years behind his chronological age was actually three years above! Staggering results. Consequently Joe made the transition to the local secondary school confidently and successfully.

For some reason Joe had not managed to really learn these early motor skills, but once they were achieved, his cognitive abilities were also able to develop without hindrance.

Goddard (2002: xvi) says:

reading depends largely on oculomotor skill involving precise eye movements and writing involves hand eye coordination with the support of the postural system. Most academic learning depends on basic skills becoming automatic at the physical level. If a child fails to develop automatic control over balance and motor skills, many other aspects of learning can be affected negatively, even though the child has average or above average intelligence.

Goddard continues:

Control of the body also lays the foundation of self-control. Immaturity in the functioning of the nervous system is often accompanied by signs of emotional immaturity such as poor impulse control, difficulty in reading the body language of others (social cues) and unsatisfactory peer relationships.