Teaching Movement Education

Movement skills give students the foundation for leading physically active, healthy lives. This book offers a perfect balance of knowledge base, pedagogy, and curriculum content—delivered with practical learning tools and activities—so you can help your students develop movement skills that foster healthful habits.

This theoretically sound resource has the following features:

• A movement education tree with roots for the four basic movement concepts (body, space, effort, relationship)

• A flip ’n’ fold listing of the four main concepts and their subcategories and elements, which you can easily store in your pocket or on a clipboard when teaching

• A wealth of developmentally appropriate and fun movement education activities with which you can teach the fundamentals of movement education

• Engaging KinetiKidz characters that demonstrate technically correct form for 121 movement elements and that help children move more, feel good, and think better

In section 1, authors Karen Weiller Abels and Jennifer Bridges introduce you to the history and philosophy of movement education and guide you through the movement education framework that you can use in your teaching. You explore how to teach movement skills and are supplied with fresh and creative ideas to incorporate movement teaching into your classes.

In section 2, part I, you move from learning about movement education to incorporating it into your classes. Here, you learn how to teach the four basic movement concepts and their related elements through 166 activities in the four concept areas. Section 2, part II supplies 6 educational games lesson plans, 6 educational gymnastics lesson plans, and 5 educational dance lesson plans.

Teaching Movement Education offers a complete framework to help your students build their movement skills and, in the process, enjoy being active throughout their lives.

Karen Weiller Abels, PhD, is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of North Texas in Denton. She has more than 25 years of teaching experience, including teaching elementary physical education. She has developed and taught many courses at the collegiate level that focus on teacher preparation, particularly in movement education.

Dr. Abels coauthored selections of the Children Moving ancillary materials and helped shoot, edit, and design 20 live-action video analysis activities covering all four developmental levels. She also codeveloped the flip ’n’ fold movement education document that serves as a quick reference for teachers and children.

She has coauthored many articles related to teaching elementary physical education and served as the Southern District representative for the Council on Physical Education for Children.

Dr. Abels enjoys running, weightlifting, spending time with her family, and taking her two dachshunds for walks.

Jennifer M. Bridges, PhD, is a professor of kinesiology in the College of Health and Human Services at Saginaw Valley State University in University Center, Michigan. For more than 20 years she has taught motor development, motor learning, movement fundamentals, and dance to preservice majors in physical education teacher education. She also held the ACSM health fitness specialist certification for 15 years.

Dr. Bridges has coauthored portions of the well-known Children Moving ancillary materials, which involved shooting, editing, and designing 20 live-action movement analysis activities covering all four motor development levels for the online interactive ancillary video set. In addition, she developed the electronic, animated Movement Analysis E-Wheel based on the handheld manipulative wheel she adapted from the early work of Dr. Graham. This work led her to codevelop the manipulative document, presented in this text, called the flip ’n’ fold, which presents the movement education framework as a practical reference for teachers and children.

In her leisure time, Dr. Bridges enjoys being active with her family in a variety of outdoor pursuits, playing competitive badminton, and developing innovations.