ABSTRACT

Specific training programmes designed to correct difficulties or disabilities in motor-perceptual functions have yet to be demonstrated as having a high degree of success. Perhaps activities likely to foster good motor-perceptual development, introduced as part of a rich general curriculum, would be more successful in preventing the occurrence of difficulties or reducing disabilities. The motor-perceptual functions which are a requisite of reading readiness and of subsequent progress in reading. It is not surprising that slow learners who are retarded in reading present problems in such areas as spatial and temporal sequencing, the positions of figures in space, the discrimination of shapes and the generalization of shape patterns. The object of Gross motor activities is to make the pupil aware of his own body and its parts, to establish an accurate and permanent body-image and, on the basis of these, to move his body in space in an accurate and controlled manner.