Recognizing motor difficulties

Working for the first time in a unit for learners with Moderate Learning Difficulties (MLD) twelve years ago, I struggled to understand why they could not make good progress with their reading and writing, despite small group and individual working and a large number of resources. I could not accept that these lively and frequently well-motivated learners could neither learn nor be taught. At the age of seven they still desperately wanted to learn and be successful, but every time they felt they ‘failed’, a little more of their self-esteem and self-confidence was eroded away, leaving opportunities for behavior difficulties and lack of effort to gain footholds. This refusal to be professionally beaten started a search for answers that is still continuing to this day.

While observing these pupils with learning difficulties, it became very clear that many of them also had a motor difficulty. It was almost as if the physical problems were actually ‘blocking’ the development of their cognitive knowledge and skills, their social interaction skills and their emotional maturity. As an educator I began to recognize that sitting these learners down at a desk all day writing and reading was not actually what they needed to help them learn. As Russell (1993: 13) says:

If you have a locked door in your house and the key to that door has been lost, the greater the variety of keys you can collect to try to unlock the door, the more chance there is of finding one which will work.

During PE lessons I saw that these children did not have the ability to carry out many early gross motor physical skills, such as the ability to stand on one foot, to skip, to hop, to walk backwards (or even forwards!) in a straight line, to be able to catch a large ball and even to be able to move their heads without the arms moving with them. Hence the search for literature and programs to solve these difficulties commenced. However, it was the children’s progress once pro grammes were put into action that really reinforced the need for this type of learning to be included in their curriculum.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

أهالي كربلاء يشيعون النعش الرمزي للإمام الحسن (عليه السلام) عند العتبتين المقدستين

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تقيم مجلس عزاء بذكرى شهادة الإمام الحسن (عليه السلام)

قاعة العرض المتحفي في العتبة العباسية المقدسة تشهد إقبالًا واسعًا من الزائرين

خلال لقائه ملاكات مدارس العميد.. سماحة السيّد الصافي يؤكّد أهمّية التعلّم المستمرّ الذي يفتح آفاق الفهم والمعرف

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

تسارع الشيخوخة.. متى يبدأ وأي الأعضاء أكثر تأثرا؟

9 مسببات شائعة للالتهاب المزمن قد تهدد صحتك

باحثون يطورون علاجا لهشاشة العظام.. النتائج مذهلة

تحمي من أمراض عديدة.. 6 فوائد لتناول البطاطا الحلوة

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

عودة التعاون الفضائي بين روسيا وأميركا.. وبحث ملفات "هامة"

المعلمون في خطر.. خاصية جديدة في "تشات جي بي تي" تشرح الدروس

بشرى لمرضى الشلل.. شريحة في الدماغ قد تتيح التحكم بالأدوات

مدينة غارقة.. هل يخفي قاع البحر الكاريبي سرّ حضارة مفقودة؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Action learning as a path forward

Implications of the study for enhancing assessment Questions raised by the study

Summary of findings

Contributions in the placement

Learning outcomes

Affordances and bricolage

Learning processes Qualitative differences in placement experiences

Results, analysis and discussions

Research methodology

Conceptualizing learning and its assessment in community placements

Ecology, Identity and Assessment: The Implications of a Case Study of Police Students Learning in Community Placements for Assessment

Combining Novel Pedagogic and IT Approaches to Align the Assessment of Workplace Learning with Criteria for Academic Credit Conclusions