Teaching a New Motor Skill? Try Full Immersion

Are you teaching a child a new motor skill? Has a child been working on one goal for a long time but still having difficulty? Try full immersion when children are learning new motor skills. When we are teaching a child a new motor skill or perhaps working on refining a motor skill, try bombarding the child with the skill. Here are some examples:

The goal is to write a circle. Overload the child with circles during the therapy session. For example, cardboard tube slices, tub tops, jar lids, paper plate stencils, hot glue rubbings, salt tray, cut out circles, etc all to practice manipulating and writing circles.
The goal is to jump forward 6 inches with two feet together. Overload jumping skills with watching videos of children jumping, model the proper jump, play a game with frogs who jump, jump on a trampoline, recite jumping poems and more.
The goal is to perform a sit to stand transfer with verbal cues. Practice sit to stand transfers in many different chairs, videotape the sit to stand transfer and watch it, practice manipulating action figures or Barbie type dolls moving from sitting to standing, etc.

Take the time to discuss with the child the importance of the skill. By providing all the opportunities and examples of the skill will hopefully teach the child how important the skill is and to help provide the child with internal motivation to achieve the goal. Read more about intrinsic motivation.

If possible, have the child help keep track of their progress. Try My Goal Tracker.

My Goal Tracker is a digital download that includes the materials to create a binder for student-generated data collection on his/her goals. There are two versions – Handwriting with Tears® and Zaner-Bloser® Style fonts if you want to practice handwriting skills too!

The student can track his/her goals over time, by monitoring the skills over the course of a day, week, month or quarter. This allows the student to get a visual picture of improvement, decline or maintenance of different skills. Included in this download is the following: samples of completed forms, goals setting worksheet, improvement ideas worksheet, goal tracking cards (for trials or percentage) and graphs to complete for daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly progress (number of trials out of 10, percentage or minutes). There is also one blank form for you to label if you are monitoring goals in a different manner. Complete the goal worksheet, print the necessary forms and place in a binder. The student can then graph his/her progress accordingly.

By having the students track their own goals they will take ownership of their progress. It doesn’t get any easier than this to track progress. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MY GOAL TRACKER.

Teaching a New Motor Skill Try Full Immersion