Assignment 1: Summarizing Ch. 1-3

As college students, we want to be a physically educated person. In Chapter one the book defines a physically educated person as someone who consists of many things; lives a physically active lifestyle, uses concepts and principles to help the learning and development of motor skills, and uses their knowledge and involvement in physical activity too show enjoyment, challenge, self-expression/ and social interaction (5). There are National Standards for Physical Education and these standards include Content Standards, Performance Standards, and Performance Benchmarks. Figure 1.1(5) shows how each of these all relate to each other. Content Standard is what the student is expected as a physically educated person, Performance Standard is what this student should achieve as a physically educated person, and Performance Benchmark is a certain behavior that shows the progress that student is making towards the goals expected (5). Having National Standards for Physical Education is important because you need guidelines that enforce Physical Educators across the nation to teach our youth about how to become and stay physically active throughout their lives.

Chapter two talks about the factors of health that affect our children and their motor development. Factors that affect Childhood include things such as nutrition, physically activity, illness, and lifestyle (33).  Nutrition is especially important in your life because even if you stay physically active, your food choices can distinguish how healthy you really are. All of these factors affect one another, and depend on one another. Furthermore, chapter two discusses the development of a child's motor development. The book defines development in a child "as an upward process leading toward increased capabilities"(38). Table 2.1- Sequence of emergence of selected locomotor, manipulative, and stability abilities"(38) describes and lists movement patterns and different abliities of the movements listed. The table also lists the ages that these movements should happen.

 

Chapter three talks about fundamental movement skills, and the three categories that consist of these skills. The three movement skills are stability, locomotor, and manipulative. Stability movement skills form the basis of locomotor and manipulative skills because every movement has to involve some element of stability (53). Stability movement skills “are skills in which the body remains in place but moves around its horizontal or vertical axis” (53). Some examples of stability movements are balancing, twisting and stretching. Locomotor movement skills are movements in which the body moves horizontally or vertically from one place to the next (56). Some of these examples are walking,  running and climbing. Lastly, manipulative movement skills are either gross motor manipulative or fine motor manipulation; movements that consist of force-to-force objects to object-handling activities that consist of precision accuracy, and accuracy movements to motor control, respectively (57). Some of these examples are throwing/catching and kicking. 

All of these factors mentioned above are important to our profession and most importantly the health of our students. Through fundamental skill development and assessment you have the capability of creating a healthy and physically active foundation for a child that remains throughout their entire life.