14.2 Sequencing Motor Skill Activities and Providing Feedback to Enhance Development
Key Takeaways
- Effective sequencing moves along defined dimensions -- simple to complex, stationary to moving, closed to open, cooperative to competitive, and unopposed to defended -- rather than jumping from drill to full game.
- The generic content development sequence progresses through informing, extending, refining, and applying tasks, and the refining task is the one teachers most often skip.
- Extension changes the difficulty or complexity of a task, refinement improves the quality of the movement, and application adds a performance or competitive outcome.
- Small-sided and modified games are the primary tool for bridging practice and full game play, because they preserve the tactical problem while increasing each student's touches and decisions.
- Feedback during a sequence should address the refinement cue currently in focus, so that instruction, practice, and correction all target the same element.
Dimensions of Progression
A sequence is a controlled change along one dimension at a time. Changing several at once produces a task students cannot handle and a teacher who cannot diagnose why.
| Dimension | Easier end | Harder end |
|---|---|---|
| Environment | Closed and predictable | Open and unpredictable |
| Body state | Stationary | Moving, then moving at speed |
| Object | Large, light, slow, soft | Small, heavy, fast, firm |
| Distance and space | Short, large target | Long, small target |
| Opposition | None | Passive defender, then active, then full |
| Decisions | One option | Multiple options requiring selection |
| Complexity | Single skill | Skill combinations and sequences |
| Cooperation | Cooperative | Competitive |
| Time pressure | Self-paced | Externally paced with limited time |
Worked sequence: receiving and passing in soccer
- Stationary, self-served, to a stationary partner at short distance
- Stationary, partner-served, varied service quality
- Receiving on the move, unopposed
- Receiving and passing on the move with a passive defender
- Three-versus-one keep-away with an active defender
- Four-versus-four small-sided game with a directional goal
Each step changes essentially one variable, so the teacher can tell where the breakdown occurs.
Content Development: Informing, Extending, Refining, Applying
Within a lesson, tasks fall into four types, and the mix is diagnostic of the lesson's quality.
| Task type | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Informing | Introduce the task or skill for the first time | "Today we are working on the underhand serve. Watch -- step, swing, contact below the waist." |
| Extending | Change difficulty or complexity | "Move back two steps." "Now serve to the right half of the court." "Now with a defender." |
| Refining | Improve the quality of the movement, holding the task constant | "Same task -- this time contact the ball below your waist with a flat hand." |
| Applying | Add an outcome, count, or competition that puts the skill to use | "How many of ten can you land in the back third?" or a small-sided game |
Refining tasks are the ones teachers most often skip. The common pattern is inform, then extend, extend, extend, apply -- constantly making the task harder without ever improving the movement. Students end the unit performing a difficult version of a poor pattern. The corrective discipline is: after each extension, ask whether a refinement is needed before extending again.
Modifying Games: TREE and STEP
Two frameworks name the levers for modifying an activity, and both appear in professional literature.
| TREE | STEP | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching style | -- | How instruction is delivered; more or less student decision-making |
| Rules | Space | Boundaries, area size, safe zones |
| Equipment | Task | Ball size and weight, implement length, target and goal size, net height |
| Environment | Equipment / People | Surface, space, number of participants, grouping |
In practice the levers are: space (bigger area favors offense; smaller increases decision speed), number of players (fewer players means more touches and clearer tactical problems), equipment (a lighter, larger, slower object lowers difficulty immediately), rules (an extra bounce allowed, no defending in a zone, a required number of passes before scoring), and scoring (points for tactical behavior, not only goals -- for example a point for three consecutive passes).
Why small-sided games work
A four-versus-four game rather than eleven-versus-eleven multiplies each student's touches, forces every student into decisions rather than letting some hide, presents the same tactical problem in a simpler form, and reduces the standing time in which behavior problems begin. Reducing player numbers is the single most effective modification available in a games unit.
Scoring for tactics
Modifying the scoring system directs attention. If the tactical objective is maintaining possession, award a point for a set number of consecutive passes; if it is creating width, award extra points for goals scored after the ball has crossed both wide channels. Students optimize for whatever is scored.
Aligning Feedback with the Sequence
Feedback should address the refinement currently in focus. During a refining task cued on contact point, feedback addresses contact point -- not footwork, not follow-through, not outcome. This alignment is what makes a sequence coherent:
- Inform with a cue
- Extend to the appropriate difficulty
- Refine with the cue in focus
- Give feedback congruent with that cue
- Apply so the student experiences the skill working
- Return to refine when quality degrades
A teacher whose feedback wanders across every element gives students no priority and no way to improve.
Pacing the Sequence
- Watch the success rate. If a large majority succeed easily, extend. If most fail, step back.
- Do not let a task run past its usefulness. Once students are succeeding routinely, the task is now practice of something already learned.
- Return to earlier steps deliberately when a later step exposes a broken foundation -- but do so as a refinement of the whole skill rather than as a demotion.
- Vary the entry point across the class. Different students should be at different steps at the same time; a stations format or teaching by invitation accomplishes this without labeling.
Common Praxis Traps
- Trap 1: Extending without refining. Students perform a harder version of a poor pattern.
- Trap 2: Changing several variables at once. You cannot diagnose the failure.
- Trap 3: Jumping from drill to full-sided game. Small-sided and modified games are the bridge.
- Trap 4: Feedback that wanders across elements. Match the cue in focus.
- Trap 5: Keeping the whole class on one step. Differentiate the entry point.
- Trap 6: Scoring only goals when the objective is possession. Score the tactical behavior you want.
During a serving unit, a teacher repeatedly moves students farther from the net and adds target zones, but never addresses how students are contacting the ball. By the end of the unit students serve inconsistently from long distances. Which task type was omitted?
A teacher wants students in a soccer unit to get more touches and make more decisions during game play. Which modification is most effective?
Which sequence changes only one variable at a time and therefore allows the teacher to diagnose where a breakdown occurs?
The tactical objective of a small-sided invasion game unit is maintaining possession. Which modification best directs students' attention to that objective?