Motor development
- If you’re in danger and need to run away. To achieve this you need the motor skills of strong legs, arms pumping, and a physically fit heart and your mind free of the mechanics of running because you need to think about exit routes and places of possible safety.
- If you’re hungry and need to cook. Cooking is much more complicated than you first think and requires good motor skills. When cooking, you want to be considering the quantities of each ingredient needed for the meal, the heat of the cooker, judgement about whether something is cooked, the skills to cut and chop and whisk etc. However, if you’re at a low level of motor skill, the most you may be able to do is concentrate on the chopping and not think about any else.
Motor Skill | Definition | Examples |
---|---|---|
Locomotor or gross motor | how the body moves in the environment | walking, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, sliding, leaping, crawling, climbing, standing and sitting. And yes sitting is a movement! |
Non-locomotor | is all to do with balance | are bending, stretching, twisting, pivoting, swinging, rolling, landing, stopping, dodging, balancing and inverted support (holding oneself upside down). |
Manipulative or fine motor | imparting a force on objects | catching, kicking, trapping, striking, volleying, bouncing, rolling, pulling, pushing, punting (eg: drop kick in rugby), dribbling, grasping, reaching, gripping, holding (eg: sewing, cutting, typing, writing, drawing, painting). |
Table: Summary taken from Gallahue, D.L. & Ozmun. J.C. Understanding Motor Development. Infants, children, adolescents and adults. 6th ed. New York:McGraw-Hill. 2006
“In terms of children, it is important that the support staff are kind and patient, as for some particular pupils, it can be very difficult to carry out tasks which we understand to be basic, however they need to be empathetic. They must also attempt to help teachers to understand what they could be doing better to support the pupil, to make lessons more accessible to pupils.” – Ayeasha Cindy
Supporting Successful Learning in Secondary School

Our purpose is to transform access to education.
We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world. These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life.
We believe learning should be an enjoyable, social experience, so our courses offer the opportunity to discuss what you’re learning with others as you go, helping you make fresh discoveries and form new ideas.
You can unlock new opportunities with unlimited access to hundreds of online short courses for a year by subscribing to our Unlimited package. Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations.
Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education