The acquisition of a skill is something that every person has to face through most of their lives. First learning to roughly move the hands and feet, then fingers, then crawl, then walk, and finally to running and lateral movements. "In elementary education classes, the teacher is concerned with helping students learn fundamental motor skills sucks as throwing and running, which provide a foundation for learning the more advanced sport skills" (Curtis 11) Unfortunately some people never progress past the basic skills and motions that are learned at the elementary level. For some people movements come easy, and for others it takes repeated trials and failures before a skill can be easily performed. How much physical movement is actually physical? How much does movement rely on thought processes? "One who gives it any thought whatever cannot help being impressed not only by the beauty of human motion but also by its apparently infinite possibilities, its meaningfulness, its orderliness, its adaptability to the surrounding environment. Nothing is haphazard; nothing is left to chance. Every study that participates in the movement of the body does so according to physical and physiological principles" (Wuest 195). For some people skills can be easily acquired through watching, but for most, it requires numerous trials, and numerous failures. The problem is to critically examine the course of development of motor learning as it is a exemplified in learning to juggle with one hand.
Materials:.
Two tennis balls.
Log.
Space with good lighting and a nondistracting background.
Stop watch.
Procedure:.
1) Working in groups of two, one partner attempts to juggle continuously in the preferred hand for a period of four minutes each class period. Toss one tennis ball up and then the other tennis ball. Alternately throwing and catching, keeping the two objects in motion under control. Viewing partner counts the number of catches per trial and records on a score sheet.