Chapter 1-3

Assessing the skill development the fundamental skills as students progress in age is extremely important.  Students need to progress to be able to achieve everyday tasks such as walking, writing, running, and many more activities.  Having students achieve a performance benchmark should be your main goal as a teacher.  According to Gallahue and Donnelly, A performance benchmark is a behavior that indicates progress toward a performance goal (5).  A performance benchmark for example could be throwing a football with a correct spiral eight times out of ten attempts.  Underneath performance benchmark is performance standard as well as content standard.  These are what the student should be able to do as well as the expected level of achievement (5).

Motor skills need to develop in sequences.  Its is very unlikely that an eighteen month old baby is going to go out, run and win the Boston Marathon.  They need to go through several developmental stages in order to mature as a physically active being.  For instance before you can run you have to be able to walk, and before you can walk to have to be able to stand.  As one develops their motor skills with walking they learn to walk sideways, up a set of stairs, down a set of stairs, then on to a hurried walk (38-39).  Eventually their running and walking capabilities develop into the mature stage.  Once the mature stage has been reached they will continue to develop into better runners and learn about the different techniques as the mature.

Assessing the developmental skills a very important.  One reason is because as a teacher you want all of your students to be the most physically fit they can be.  It is extremely important to asses with the NYS and NASPE standards.  These standards specify that all students are able to perform basic motor skills, they are able to value physical activity, have resources available for them, and preform physical education safely.  Being able to move fundamentally is an important aspect to physical education.  Before advancing to more difficult tasks students have to be able to master the basics, and lower level skills.  By being able to asses these things, you as a teacher assist the slower developers in becoming fundamentally sound, and also seeing when a student demonstrates each concept wholly they allow them to move on in their development.