Feasibility Study of a Movement and Story-telling Intervention for Reception Children

Basic movement skills such as throwing, catching, and jumping are key factors in creating more active children, with health, social and academic benefits. Similarly, good language skills such as vocabulary and understanding narrative are an essential foundation to academic achievement.

However, motor and language development of 5-year-olds in the UK is poorer than children in other European countries, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. These difficulties have been exacerbated by Covid-19-related school closures.

Theory suggests that there could be benefits to motor and language development by combining movement and language activities in a single intervention.

The research team developed a 12-week movement and story-telling intervention (MAST) suitable for delivery to 3-5-year-olds which aims to improve movement and language skills.

This project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Addressing the challenge

Building on a previous pilot (Duncan, Cunningham & Eyre, 2019), the research team conducted a feasibility study of MAST for delivery by Reception teachers during whole-class PE lessons. Focusing on schools in disadvantaged areas allowed greater potential for narrowing the attainment gap early in a child’s education.

The first stage of the research involved working with two or three Reception teachers to adapt the existing MAST lesson plans, resources, and teacher training to feedback into a training session using the adapted materials.

Subsequently, nine schools were recruited: five ran the intervention and the others continued with ‘business-as-usual’. A day’s training was provided, and during the 12-week intervention period the research team provided ongoing support and conduct a feasibility evaluation.

This research aimed to explore whether MAST had beneficial short-term effects on motor development and language skills in Reception children and the extent the intervention could be successfully adopted by schools.

Findings

Both language and fundamental movement skills were found to improve significantly more in the MAST schools than in the comparison schools.  The programme was found to be feasible for implementation by reception teachers, who were positive about the programme.

Making a difference

The immediate tangible impact of this project has been be to improve the language, literacy and motor skills of the children in England who have benefitted from the programme. Training has been subsequently offered to schools across the Midlands and outreach and training is ongoing. The materials have been further refined through this project and a teacher guide and activities booklet has been produced to accompany the training provided to settings. By providing Reception teachers with the training and tools they need to adopt an efficient and effective approach to raising children’s attainment with respect to both language and motor skills, the project has the potential to impact early years training and pedagogic practice.

By addressing some of the learning needs of disadvantaged children a more distal impact will be our contribution to closing the attainment gap that is a key concern of organisations such as the Sutton Trust, and potentially improving the social mobility of the children longer-term as a consequence. This project forms the first step towards larger scale roll-out of MAST to benefit children across the UK.

Additionally, this work has been recognised within South Australia as an approach with potential to address early years challenges in that country context.  Since this project has completed, members of the MAST team have provided training to reception teachers and community playgroup coordinators, and an evaluation of this Australian-based implementation of the programme is ongoing.

Project report

The paper reporting the results of the Nuffield funded project can be accessed here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475225000349

If you would like to learn more about MAST an access training and resources for your setting, email Clare.Wood@ntu.ac.uk.