Don't Let the Psychomotor Domain Psyche You Out

When writing objectives, you always want to make sure you include the famous ABCDs: Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree. All four of these components are essential for explaining to your readers/students what the intentions of your lesson are. For physical education, the psychomotor domain in theory is the easiest to implement and assess but on paper, there are multiple levels that teachers have to think about when devising the objectives.

Harrow's psychomotor taxonomy provides six levels that are organized "according to the degree of coordination including involuntary responses and learned capabilities". At the bottom is the non-discursive communication which is represented by body language alone. Students might not be able to participate in the activity for whatever reason and this will be shown through their negative body language. Skilled movements follow which features activities where a level of efficiency can be / is achieved. This is practically the bare minimum where students can find success in some sort of component of the activity. Physical activities require endurance, strength and agility and students will have to demonstrate these characteristics during the activities. The perceptual level allows environmental cues to help in adjusting movements while basic fundamental movements are the simple movements that build to a much more complex set of movements. Students should be able to demonstrate these basic fundamental movement s and with them they should be able to lead into more complex movements over time. At the top is the reflex movements stage which is automatic reactions. Students will not have to put one and one together at this point and on the spot will be able to perform the correct movement.

An easier way to breakdown the psychomotor domain levels is: Observing, Imitating, Practicing and Adapting. The Observing level is when the student watches a more experienced person such as the teacher or student demonstration. Imitating is copying the specific behavior while learning the skill. Direction and feedback is given for the student to refine his or her skills. Practicing is when the students try the physical activity over and over with hopes that the skill will become automatic. Adapting is the final step where the student fine tunes and makes minor changes to perfect the skill.

Teachers that are planning lessons should take into account that learning a skill is a process that does not happen overnight for some students. It will take time for students to go through the levels and be perfect at a skill. Everyone learns at different rates.