I am in an elementary school class with first graders. Though they are in the early childhood stage of development, their development varies widely from those in the upper level of the same category. During first grade, the kids are essentially developing their fine and gross motor skills that, in turn, will give them more stamina and coordination. These two skills are primarily where they differences lie between kids, and they are also a big focus in the classroom.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Students in a first grade classroom, my host classroom included, spend a lot of time improving fine motor skills, while learning content and not realizing it. Many activities they are given not only help them cognitively, but are also strengthening their fine motor skills, or ability to move in a detailed manner. For instance, when I am in the classroom, they are doing their Daily 5 reading stations, and almost anytime they do work, they are doing something with handwriting, drawing or something that requires detailed movement. Whether they are doing Thanksgiving crafts at the “teacher table,” a digraph packet or are cutting and pasting images, they use these skills almost every day. I don’t think there is one day that I have been there where one of their stations did not involve one of these skills. It has also been extremely cool to see how they have improved since kindergarten. I was lucky enough to be an assistant teacher in many of their kindergarten and first grade summer school classrooms, and from what I saw there and what I see now, their fine motor skills have improved a lot. Many of them are able to draw and color real shapes, with few mistakes, and their handwriting is much less shaky and sideways, but instead on the correct lines and “stable-looking.” I think that especially for kids of this age, the daily exposure they get to these activities is really valuable and I can see the change it has made in doing their detail-oriented work.
GROSS MOTOR SKILLS
Another skill that these students are trying to improve at the same time is the use of gross motor skills, or large movements. Though these are not a lot of activities that can be done in the classroom, I am able to see it when they do these types of movements during a class brain break or something like that. The idea of gross motor skills at this age is that the students will become more coordinated, agile and also become stronger. For example, throughout kindergarten summer school I saw many kids begin to get strong enough to do climbing activities, particularly monkey bars, which was something they could not do at the beginning of the summer. I also thought it was so strange build themselves up to do things like this, but probably half of adults can’t do these things even though they are more developed. I think that, though recess may just be meant as a learning break, it has also been a great way for kids to improve their fine motor skills, and do bigger-movement activities while being challenged by other kids. I think others in their grade push them to do more and as a result they continue to get stronger. But even in the classroom this year, when they do dancing brain breaks, you can see that the bigger dance moves become easier for them, and they are better able to sync themselves with the video. Overall, through just a few weeks in class, I can see how these skills are being improved wildly.
SIZE
In terms of size, the first graders are wildly different if you were to compare each kid side by side. Unlike middle school, the kids are roughly the same size and height across the board, with the exception of a few outliers that are either a bit smaller or bigger. As I think about it, I also can’t seem to identify any outliers in size within my host teacher’s classroom. They really are roughly the same size. There is also not any pattern to who the outliers may be; no specific gender, no specific race, etc… that finds itself with a lot of outliers. It seems that right now they are all growing at roughly the same rate, and their bodies have not made a differentiation in when their bodies will grow. They don’t show any signs of obvious growth spurts, or just insane growing patterns. For the most part, the kids tend to be at a steady rate of growing and there is not a lot of difference between all of the kids in comparison.
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