Aida Banyuls

Learning and Development

November 2015

Reactions to the Psychomotor skills workshop

The workshop we attended on Friday 13th was an experience we lived as a class but also as
individuals working to achieve the bodys movements. Even Santi was doing a path to follow in
order to achieve coordination among all the students, through this workshop I felt free to
move and I also felt proud of the results we had at the end. To be able of dancing a song with
other 70 students without being a caos was a nice experience and I feel more as part of a
group since that. This is one of the reasons I would like to apply this kind of activities to my
future students; because this is so useful in order to understand that they belong to a class of
different people that can do something beautiful together and also because of the essential
feeling or partnership that is achieved during and after being moving together and having a
role with a responsibility respecting their classmates. Furthermore, I have learned that music
has a power that anything has to touch feelings and I can use it at class as a psychological
strategy to work about different topics like values or emotions.
From the psychomotor point of view, I think that through this activity children can learn to
move their body at the same time that stimulate their ability of following a rhythm and
tempus. It helps to achieve equilibrium and reflective notion with every movement. Also,
taking into account that the activity may be taken in a class with other people, the student has
to be aware of the organization of space-time or has to learn it in order to give space to the
others but also interact. As Santi said, if we try to do this activity with the youngest students (3
to 5 years) it will be difficult because they have not developed yet their body movements so
the activity will be so basic but it does not mean that wont be useful. Through this activity
young children can learn, first of all, their body scheme construction, each part of their body
and the capability to move of each one, so they will have the opportunity to be creative while
dancing. From the other hand, these young children (from 3 to 5 years old) dont know already
the graphic gesture movement and I think that through this activity they can learn it doing as
part of the path movements the one which simulates writing.
There are two kinds of development during the psychomotor skills workshop that are
important for children. First of all, regarding the cognitive development a child who is active in

Aida Banyuls

Learning and Development

November 2015

the activity has to assimilate the knowledge he/she achieved about the path that has to follow
by the instructor. S/he has to use memory and accommodate each one of the movements,
then he/she has to apply the previous knowledge in order to be coordinated with the rest of
the students. Often, during the sessions the child will be lost and he/she will have to solve the
problem to come back at the point his/her classmates are. This situation foces him/her to
organize the path in his/her mind, and try to be at time. On the other hand, is important to
take into account the fact of doing it among other children. It is the best environment to
develop the socio-emotional development because sometimes they will have to interact and
do some movements as pairs or as a whole group; at the end it means to interact with the
context. To do it, the child will need to use the language which he/she knows previously and
practice socialization with his/her classmates as well. One of the positive consequences that it
has as result is the loosing of shame and shyness because they have to dance not in front of
the class but among the others while they dance as well. Finally, regarding the emotional part,
children will use their creativity to design the free movements through which they can express
their feelings and emotions to the others and it gives freedom.
After all, Im so conviced to do this workshop within my practice being a teacher because it
opens doors that sometimes require long terms of time due of the different personalities
represented at class. Pshychomotor movements are a way to communicate, express and give
freedom to our feelings at the same time that is a way to learn how our body works and how
to use it in order to achieve other objectives. It has been a learning by an experience for me.