with neither of them moving. Then you would
progress to throwing the ball to a child while
they were moving, and then to throwing
the ball while the child was moving with an
opponent trying to intercept. It’s clear to see
how you can make the activity more difficult
by adding or changing elements. Progression
not only enhances development, it can also
help children’s self-esteem by matching
their abilities to the task.
Matching your teaching style to the
child’s motor skill learning stage
When a child is learning a new motor skill,
they are deemed to be in the first stage
of motor learning, which is termed the
‘cognitive stage’. This is where the child
focuses on the thought processes of each
movement. For example, if they are being
taught how to complete a serve in tennis, the
child will separate the information presented
into individual components to recreate the
movement. The child will go to perform the
serve and will be thinking of how to hold the
racquet, how to toss the ball in the air, when
and how to pull the arm back and when and
how to strike the ball. The cognitive stage is
characterised by a large number of errors
and a low consistency in performance.
During this phase it is suggested that you:
• keep instructions to a minimum to avoid
overloading the child with information
• focus feedback on the key elements
taught, not on performance outcomes
• explain how to correct errors, as children
in this stage will not know how to fix
these themselves
• provide lots of encouragement and a fun
focus as this phase of learning can be
frustrating
• keep the environment as neutral as
possible, so rather than pitching a ball at
a child, for example, place the ball on a
tee for them to hit
• recognise that learning a new skill can
be emotionally and physically
exhausting, thus observe the child for
signs of fatigue and respond
appropriately.
After some time a child will progress to
the second phase of motor skill learning.
This is termed the ‘associative stage’. You
can tell when a child starts moving into
this phase when you can see that they no
longer need to think about every facet of
the movement. Their performance becomes
more consistent and they start to selfcorrect some aspects of their movement.
This stage is still characterised with errors,
some inconsistency and the need for some
prompting regarding self-correction.
At this stage you can start to:
• incorporate goal and performanceoriented tasks, such as challenging them
to see how many tennis serves they can
get in the se