Merryville Public School is pioneering movement education, a holistic approach that equips students with essential skills for health and wellbeing prior to engaging in sports. This method activates cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning domains, fostering confidence and promoting an active lifestyle among children and adolescents. The framework encourages problem-solving and self-directed movement choices, aligning with state and national physical education policies.

1. Movement Education
Merryville Public School is leading the way in health and wellbeing.

2. What is Movement Education?
Movement education is a holistic approach in educating student's about how to care for their
health and well-being. Movement education ensures that students are equipped with the right skills
and knowledge about movement before they participate in any sports (Abels & Bridges, 2010;
2011).
There are three learning domains of which movement education activates when students are
engaging in skill-based activities; cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains (Abels & Bridges,
2010; 2011).
We use Head, Heart and Hands for short. This means that students will need to understand a task
(cognitive) before they do the task (psychomotor) then they will learn to appreciate and value the
skill (affective).

3. Skills
Some basic skills that children will need to familiarise
themselves with include:
• Skip
• Leap
• Catch
• Hop
• Kick
(ACARA 2014; NSWDET2000)

4. Why Movement Education?
Studies have shown that movement education facilitates the social, physical and
psychological development for both children and adolescents, and may be the foundation
of an active lifestyle.
It was also discovered that the positive association between movement education,
including Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS), instils a sense of confidence and
competency in children and adolescents .
Furthermore, the positive association between movement education competency and
weight status suggest that developing competency in movement skills may have important
health implications for young people (Luban, Morgan, Cliff, Barnett & Oakley, 2010;
Sevimli-Celik & Johnson, 2016).

5. Implementation
Central to the movement education framework approach are the general
objectives; success, activity for all, contribution by all. Students are encouraged to
problem solve and take control of their own movement choices. Teachers guide
students toward these challenges and present movement problems in such a way
that they are encouraged to apply their movement knowledge toward success.
We implement some fun movement skills into our personal development and
physical education programs adapter from Abels & Bridges (2011) as this is a
current source and includes a variety of problem-solving activities as required by
state and national physical education policies and practices (ACARA 2014; BOSNSW
2007; NSWDET 2000).

6. Reference List
Abels, K., & Bridges, J. M. (2010). Teaching movement education : Foundations for active lifestyles. Champaign, IL: Human
Kinetics.
Abels, K., & Bridges, J. M. (2011). Movement Education Framework (MEF) Made EZ!, Strategies, 25(2), 8-10.
ACARA. (2014). The Australian curriculum: Health and physical education (F-10). Sydney, Australia: Australian Curriculum
Assessment and Reporting Authority.
Board of Studies, NSW. (2007). Personal development, health and physical education K-6: Syllabus. Sydney, Australia: Author
Lubans, D. R., Morgan, P. J., Cliff, D. P., Barnett, L. M., & Okely, A. D. (2010). Fundamental movement skills in children and
adolescents: Review of associated health benefits. Sports Medicine, 40(12), 1019-1035
NSW Department of Education and Training. (2000). Get skilled: Get active: A K-6 resource to support the teaching of
fundamental movement skills. Ryde, Australia: Author.
Sevimli-Celik, S., & Johnson, J. (2016). Teacher preparation for movement education: Increasing pre-service teachers’
competence for working with young children. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 44(3), 274-288.