Motor Skill

Gross Motor Skills and Fine Motor Skills Are Important Terms For You and Your Child Gross motor and fine motor skills are important terms in a child’s development. Understanding what those terms mean are very important and a key to your child’s successful progression. Gross motor skills are movements of the large muscles in the body; such as arm and leg muscles. These types of movements are easier for a child to control and usually develop faster then fine motor skills. Some of the movements that are considered gross motor are running, walking, skipping, climbing, crawling, rolling over and dancing to name just a few. Fine motor skills are movements of the small muscles in the body such as hands. These are the hardest for a child to develop because in order to have fine motor skills you have to have really good control over your body. Young children do not tend to have as many fine motor skills as gross motor. Some of the movements that are considered fine motor are writing, pointing, grasping, holding and reaching. Gross motor development is important part of your child’s development.

You can help your child develop these skills by providing activities that encourage large muscle movement. Having small things they can climb, a safe place where they can run or walk and even trips to the playground are great ideas. If your child is younger, encouraging them to roll over, sit-up, to crawl or walk is great ways to help develop gross motor skills. That is why it is important that even a baby isn’t in a baby chair all day or in a swing. Letting them learn and stimulating movement is important for their muscles to strengthen as well. Fine motor skills can be very hard for children sometimes because they require a lot of control over their bodies. Some of the first fine motor skills you can help your young child succeed in is encouraging them to reach for objects. You will see a lot of baby toys that dangle down and that is because it is meant to attract the child to reach for things. My favorite fine motor development activity for young children is feeding them cheerios.

While they are sitting in a high chair placing cheerios for them to reach for is a great way to stimulate movement. Older children develop fine motor skills by writing, drawing, painting, putting puzzles together, etc. You will notice as children get older their toys get smaller and that is because they can manipulate things easier. Puzzles for infants usually have handles on them, then the handles disappear and it is only 5 or 6 puzzle pieces, and as a child gets older pieces get smaller and have more intricate shapes. When working on your child with either gross or fine motor skills it is important to keep in mind that each child is different. Your doctor can tell you what benchmarks they should be reaching and what age. Giving something that is too hard for your child to do will only cause frustration and the child will become uninterested. You want activities that are challenging but not impossible. This is why play is so important for a child!

What makes an effective teacher?

This particular list of characteristics appears in an excellent book that is all but unknown in the states, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, by noted scholar Paul Ramsden. 1: Interest and explanation – “When our interest is aroused in something, whether it is an academic subject or a hobby, we enjoy working hard at it. We come to feel that we can in some way own it and use it to make sense of the world around us.” (p. 98). Coupled with the need to establish the relevance of content, instructors need to craft explanations that enable students to understand the material. This involves knowing what students understand and then forging connections between what is known and what is new. 2: Concern and respect for students and student learning – Ramsden starts with the negative about which he is assertive and unequivocal.

“Truly awful teaching in higher education is most often revealed by a sheer lack of interest in and compassion for students and student learning. It repeatedly displays the classic symptom of making a subject seem more demanding than it actually is. Some people may get pleasure from this kind of masquerade. They are teaching very badly if they do. Good teaching is nothing to do with making things hard. It is nothing to do with frightening students. It is everything to do with benevolence and humility; it always tries to help students feel that a subject can be mastered; it encourages them to try things out for themselves and succeed at something quickly.” (p. 98) 3: Appropriate assessment and feedback – This principle involves using a variety of assessment techniques and allowing students to demonstrate their mastery of the material in different ways. It avoids those assessment methods that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate. It recognizes the power of feedback to motivate more effort to learn.

4: Clear goals and intellectual challenge – Effective teachers set high standards for students. They also articulate clear goals. Students should know up front what they will learn and what they will be expected to do with what they know. 5: Independence, control and active engagement – “Good teaching fosters [a] sense of student control over learning and interest in the subject matter.” (p. 100). Good teachers create learning tasks appropriate to the student’s level of understanding. They also recognize the uniqueness of individual learners and avoid the temptation to impose “mass production” standards that treat all learners as if they were exactly the same.

“It is worth stressing that we know that students who experience teaching of the kind that permits control by the learner not only learn better, but that they enjoy learning more.” (p. 102) 6: Learning from students – “Effective teaching refuses to take its effect on students for granted. It sees the relation between teaching and learning as problematic, uncertain and relative. Good teaching is open to change: it involves constantly trying to find out what the effects of instruction are on learning, and modifying the instruction in the light of the evidence collected.” (p. 102) Reference: Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education. New York: Routledge. Excerpted from Effective Teaching: Six Keys to Success, The Teaching Professor, March 2006.