PDFE # 2

Bethani Spraggins


PDFE # 2

Motor Learning-Dr. Epling

September 10, 2010

Movement Classification

The observation area that I chose this week was a physical education class at Trion Elementary School. I observed the teacher, Mr. Thomas, teaching a fourth grade class on Thursday, September 09, 2010. The class structure was composed of a warm-up, circuits, and a cool down. The gym was set up into different stations. The stations were a rock wall, scooters, jump ropes, ladders, medicine ball sit ups, BOSU ball, and a basketball toss back. The students were divided into groups of six and rotated around to each station. The warm-up part of the class was a few exercises that strengthen the core muscles, strengthen arm muscles, and stretch out the muscles. The children did jumping jacks, sit-ups, push-ups, stabilizers, and butterfly stretches. The cool down was the children participating in a jump rope contest for a prize of an ESPN magazine. Many of the exercises performed throughout the children’s lesson were focused on improving core strength; Mr. Thomas explained to me that because of the increasing childhood obesity rates they have been focusing on core strength training.

An example of each type of fundamental movement in this setting would be: Loco-motor movement would be doing jumping jacks, Manipulative movement would be catching the basketball during the toss-back, and stability would be the stabilizers during the warm-up. All of the activities used different muscle groups; one of these is when using the BOSU ball it works the internal and external obliques, transverses abdominis, and the rectus abdominis. A time when the children used fine motor skills and muscles was when they threw the basketball to the toss-back. While this activity used gross muscles such as the pectoralis major and the deltoid, all of the fine motor movements of the hand are being mastered as well. The kids performed a continuous task when he/she was jumping rope because there was no distinct beginning and end.


The children in the physical education class were all using Limited Decision Making. The activities that they were participating in did not involve complex thinking, such as coaching a sport. The environmental predictability of the situations was relatively the same. Climbing the rock wall was in a predictable environment and was using a closed skill. The ladder run through, scooter push, and sit-ups with the medicine ball were all in the gym setting where the environment is predictable and the skills are closed.

Using Gentile’s sixteen category system we can categorize most of the movements present in the Trion Elementary class. The stabilizers performed in the warm-up would fit in the “body stationary, no object manipulation” and “No environmental variation and no context variation” box. The basketball throwing onto the toss back would be in the “body stationary, object manipulation” and “no environmental variation, no context variation”. An area that fit into the “body transport, no object manipulation” and “no environmental variation, no context variation” box was when the kids climbed the rock wall and when they ran through the ladder on the ground. When the children pushed the scooter with his/her hands through obstacles this movement is categorized into the “body transport, object manipulation” and “no environmental variation, no context variation” box.

Overall, the children were building his/her motor movement skills while having a great time. Classifying these movements helps me understand how to place movements into certain classifications and to understand how crucial different types of movements are in the development process.