Movement Education

1. What is Movement Education?
Movement education is a term used to describe a pedagogical, or teaching, approach that involves
students learning through physical activity. As part of the curriculum, the approach went through
many transitions throughout the 1960’s to 1980’s and still continues to be adapted to meet the
needs of 21st Century learners today (Abels & Bridges, 2010).
Movement education is not only used in Physical Education (PE) classes, but covers all classroom
games and activities that require students to interact in a physical manner with a subject. For
example, in our 1C class, Movement Education has been used with the students to help them learn
their Friends of Ten numbers in maths. They were asked to move about the room and to count how
many body parts they could have touching the ground at one time.
Movement Education enables students to fully immerse and engage themselves with syllabus
content and gain a deeper understanding of not only the subject matter, but their own physical
bodies.

2. Fundamental Movement Skills
The 12 fundamental movement skills are:
• Static balance
• Sprint run
• Vertical jump
• Side gallop
• Hop
• Leap
• Skip
• Dodge
• Catch
• Two hand strike
• Kick
• Overarm throw
Develop in difficulty on a scale of 0-5
Initial (0) Formative Mature (5)

3. What are they and why are they so important?
The Fundamental Movement Skills are a set of movements deemed
essential in possessing to be wholly successful in the participation of
physical activities.
Each of the Fundamental Movement Skills work together to ensure that
students have control of their bodies across a full range of movements.
These actions provide a basis for Movement Education in that they can be
isolated or used in conjunction with each other by students to complete
learning games and activities. The skills range in difficulty from 0-5, with 5
being a mature grasp of the action. In 1C, we are at about level 2.

4. How do they work outside of PE?
The Fundamental Movement Skills are developed through play and games in PE, and it
is through these skill building activities that the students learn healthy habits such as
working together as a positive team, respect for people’s abilities, curiousity and
problem solving skills. These are used as a basis for learning across all subjects in the
classroom and help to add depth to oftentimes dry or disengaging topics because
students are able to successfully work in a creative, team environment.

5. Rationale of Movement Education
Movement Education is used as a common teaching approach due to its
flexible and adaptable nature. Each game or activity can be tailored to meet
the needs of all students through the simplifying or extension of the lesson,
thus maintaining engagement with subject matter (Sevimli-Celik & Johnson,
2015).
It has been chosen as a teaching method in 1C as it allows for students to
learn in a hands-on manner, something we all love to do! We have been able
to use our bodies to explore problems in Science, Maths, English, Geography
and History. It means that our lessons can be fun and interactive, as well as
helping visual and kinetic learners understand the subject matter.

6. Strengths of Movement Education
• Increased body awareness- Through specific activities, students begin to learn
what their bodies are capable of and how they can be used to problem solve, learn
and achieve goals
• Increased spatial awareness- Activities designed around specific spatial
parameters allow students to develop their sense of space and the capabilities and
limitations of their bodies
• Positive sense of community- Through team work exercises, students are able to
partake in interactive activities that motivate and entertain, all the while fostering
a sense of collaboration and trust amongst the group (Abels & Bridges, 2010). This
sense of mutual respect transcends PDHPE lessons and influences how the
students work in lessons throughout the school day.

7. • Increase in self-confidence- Of crucial importance for students in PDHPE classes
is gaining confidence in one’s own abilities and within one’s self. This is important
for all areas of a student’s life and through Movement Education this confidence
can be fostered through appropriately challenging activities and skill building.
• Encourage development of creative thinking- Through problem based exercises,
students need to think collaboratively and creatively to successful complete the
task. The benefit of this translates across all key learning areas delivered in the
classroom

8. References
• Sevimli-Celik, S. & Johnson, J. (2015). Teacher preparation for
movement education: increasing pre-service teachers’ competence
for working with young children. Asia-Pacific Journal Of Teacher
Education, 44(3), 274-288.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2015.1079303
• Abels, K. & Bridges, J. (2010). Teaching movement education.
Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.