Spatial Awareness

Children with difficulties in this area may:

+ Have poor presentation skills
+ Have difficulty with structuring and organising written work
+ Have some visual perception difficulties
+ Appear clumsy and bump into objects when moving around
+ Have problems with positional language and be unable to tell left from right
+ Have difficulty playing games or doing PE using both small an dlarge apparatus
+ Have difficulty understanding abstract maths concepts, particularly in the area of shape, measurement and space
+ Have problems with reproducing patterns and shapes
+ Have a good auditory memory skills
+ Have good verbal comprehension skills
+ Have strengths in verbal and non-verbal reasoning

Activities to develop spatial awareness skills:

Movement and Action - Action songs/rhymes using different parts of the body. Movement activities using space and position. Following directions using positional language.

Catch the Croc - Pupils walk along a chalk line as a bridge; cardboard crocodiles are already placed along both sides of the line. An adult shouts either 'right' or 'left'. Pupils jump in that direction. Those who jump on a croc on the correct side keep the croc. The winner is the person who collects the most crocs.

Follow the Leader - Pupils (in groups of six) follow the leader copying their actions as they go; the leader changes after two minutes.

Climbing and Balancing - A range of activities using both small and large apparatus; can incorporate individual targets within the lesson.

Puzzles - a)Jigsaw puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty; b)tangrams of varying degrees of difficulty.

Patterns - a) Use dots as guidelines to reproduce a pattern; b) use multi-link pattern cards and other similar activities; c) Folding and cutting shape patterns d) Use 2D shapes to make their own patterns.

Draw a Person - Look carefully at the position of features on a real person, then reproduce them as closely as possible.

Footsteps - Pupils arrange cardboard footprints for others in the group to follow; each footprint to be marked with left or right.

Twister - A games where pupils ensure different parts of their body are touching spots on the Twister mat.

Model Making - Pupils use pictures and diagrams as guides when building models; a range of construction apparatus can be used.

Maps - a) Pupils follow simple directions by using a map. b) pupils give directions for others to follow, using a map