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Our Spatial and Sequential Ordering

Systems

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I felt a cleavage in my mind As if my mind had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,But could not make them fit

The thought behind I strove to joinUnto the thought before,

But sequence ravelled out of reachLike balls upon a floor

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Your child encounters the demands for sequential and spatial ordering throughout her day in school. Sequential ordering comes into play when :

a student recounts the steps in a science experiment

thinks through the stages of a planned art project

plays scales on the piano tracks the plot of a story pictures an octagon in his mind

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Even when well equipped with strengths in attention, memory, and language, a student’s learning would be chaotic were it not for the organizing jobs by these two ordering systems.

They have their headquarters on opposite sides of our brain ( sequential usually on the left side and spatial on the right ), and they are expected to grow in their capacities and efficiencies as kids progress through school.

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Sequential and spatial ordering help our children learn on distinct levels that range from the most rudimentary sorting out of simple instructions to the most intricate ways of learning and performing.

The 5 levels of ordering are as follows :1. Perceiving – figuring out the important

characteristics and relationships inside a sequence pattern ( order of beats in a musical pattern )

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1. 2. Remembering – retaining the serial order

or spatial relationship that you have perceived for later use ( remembering the shape of a country on a map)

3. Creating – putting out products that are arranged in a useful and /or aesthetically pleasing sequence or spatial pattern ( creating a melody, making a ceramic bowl )

4. Organizing – being good at time management ( sequential ) and materials ( spatial )

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5. Thinking on a higher plane – using sophisticated reasoning, problem solving, and concept formation through spatial and sequential ordering ( thinking through a math problem in a logical manner or picturing a home designed from a blue print )

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Spatial Versus Sequential Ordering:Which would you rather be good at?

Assuming that you want to succeed in school, sequential ordering would be preferred over spatial ordering.

School is a tangle of sequential chains that threatens to shackle our students. So, despite a dysfunction in the spatial system – a child might still score straight A’s in the report card.

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Keeping a watchful eye on sequential and spatial ordering as children age

Parents and teachers can see that during the earliest grades, kids are introduced to the world of time and sequence at a pretty sophisticated level.

Discerning the order of letters in the alphabet, figuring out which numbers are greater than which others, and telling time represent sequencing milestones for five to seven year olds, who are also expected to mop up time-soaked vocabulary, words such as “before”, “after”, “until”, and “ when”.

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Their ability to comprehend and use these terms depends in part upon their inner sense of time and sequence.

By the middle of elementary school, students must comply daily with multi step instructions:

“ Now go find your workbooks, then open to the exercise on farm animals, the one we were doing yesterday, then answer the third and fourth questions before you read what I have put up on the board.”

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By the middle of elementary school, sequencing is a dominant force in mathematics.

Multistep processes and multiplication facts, among other things, are strenuous exercises in sequential ordering.

Meanwhile kids are expected to tell stories, relate incidents, and construct written paragraphs using logical sequences to guide the flow of their thoughts.

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The demand for accurate and fast sequential ordering does not diminish in secondary school.

As the workload increases, middle schoolers need to demonstrate time management skills.

They are supposed to meet deadlines and complete long –range tasks in a logical sequence of steps.

They need to be aware of time’s passage when they take tests and quizzes in class, so they won’t run out of time or rush through items they would have tackled more accurately at an easier pace.

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Spatial Ordering is most important during the earliest grades as children are assimilating the shapes of numbers and letter symbols and engaging in such tasks as pasting, tracing, cutting out, and so on, but tends to fade somewhat as a higher level academic necessity.

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Practical Considerations / strategies:

To help students overcome their sequential dysfunctions - children and teenagers should wear analog, not digital watches; they need to observe the sweeping second hand and program themselves for the passage of time in continuous intervals.

Every class in school should stress time management, having kids devise schedules, complete projects in stages and demonstrate work in progress.

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Teachers and parents need to alert to kids who become disoriented, inattentive or possibly even disruptive when faced with multi step instructions. They may be battling inadequate sequential memory.

Teachers should repeat directions and encourage these students to check with classmates regarding what is expected.

These children may also gain from receiving written or graphic directions. Also, these children need to be aware that their minds are not hospitable to newly arriving sequences.

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Songs and rhymes about the alphabet, the months of the year, and other practical sequences are particularly effective.

Music, in general can be a forceful promoter of sequential ordering.

A well-organized workspace at home is especially curative. Parents should be accommodating in helping a materially confused child get organised.

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Mind over Muscle Our Motor System

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Motor activity fosters physical conditioning and permits the acquisition of a wide repertoire of self help skills, ranging from clipping fingernails without bloodletting, to repairing a bicycle chain, to sewing a hem.

At its best it can also encourage collaboration, planning, self-monitoring, and high moral standards ( i.e. good sportsmanship).

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Efficient motor output also helps accomplish some important academic skills.

Most obviously, some of the most complex muscular manipulations are demanded for writing.

There are countless students with good ideas whose fingers just can’t keep pace with their thinking, as a result of which they come to despise and avoid writing.

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Well coordinated muscular output also works its wonders in some less obvious ways. When operating well, motor actions reinforce memory and learning.

Direct hands-on experience, manipulating materials in a science experiment, or engaging in athletic pursuits can actually improve various neurodevelopmental functions, such as active working memory and problem solving.

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Forms of Motor Function

Five distinct forms of motor function dominate work and play and together comprise the major components of the motor system. They include:

Gross motor function Fine motor function Graphomotor function Musical motor function Oromotor function

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THE MOTOR SYSTEM

Oromotor( Speaking)

Musical Motor

Gross Motor Fine MotorGraphomotor

( Writing )

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Gross motor function involves the activity of large muscles, making possible all actions needed to serve a tennis ball, engage in strenuous workout, pedal a tricycle or toss a bale of hay.

Small muscles, principally those in our hands and fingers, dedicate themselves to our fine motor function. The nearly synonymous term – eye hand co ordination – reminds us that the purposeful movements of our fingers need visual supervision.

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Fine motor and graphomotor functions are quite different.

Graphomotor function is the highly specialized motor output used in writing. Many students boast superb fine motor abilities and unacceptable graphomotor function.

Music motor includes the ability to play the harp, square dance, appreciate and mimick rock rhythms which in turn all draw upon an individual’s musical motor coordination – yielding varying degrees of triumph or despair.

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Oromotor function is another manifestation of controlled muscular activity.

Our cheeks are stuffed with some of our busiest muscle groups, which carry out the incompatible roles of pulverizing food and generating speech.

Such activity plays a critical role across the gamut of oral communication from complaining to yodeling. Oromotor fluency facilitates participation in class discussions.

Interestingly, many of the same kids who have trouble with oromotor function experience difficulty with graphomotor function.

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Gross motor Intense communication passes back and forth

between a coach or physical education teacher and his players. Kids differ in their ability to process language that describes or regulates motor function.

Some very good linguists in all areas of school have trouble interpreting the words of coaches! They simply cannot decipher language that imparts motor instruction.

Attention is a starting player in most gross motor performance. The planning and previewing of an athletic move demands tight control of attention.

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Fine Motor Function Because so much of fine motor output is kept on

course through visual inputs, you are apt to notice a strong correlation between your child’s effectiveness in spatial ordering and his/her fine motor dexterity.

An art class may become an academic oasis, a magnificent blessing for students with language –based learning difficulties.

A number of kids who thrive and distinguish themselves at easel or with a lump of clay live with humbling delays in reading, spelling or mathematics.

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Graphomotor Function It is common to be impressively dexterous at fine

motor function while harboring, disabling and disturbing graphomotor dysfunction.

Graphomotor dysfunctions are the most common reasons a child is referred to the therapist.

Parents and teachers are baffled by a bright kid who can’t or won’t write. There can be many reasons for this kind of output failure, but graphomotor dysfunction is often the

most common cause.

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Your child hates to write because of feeble connections between his memory and his fingers. Motor memory guides writing as it does the moves in sports. A very heavy flow from memory takes place when your child sets out to put things down on paper.

Interestingly, students who have trouble recalling the motor sequences as well as those who have trouble visualizing the letters seem to arrive at one very consistent conclusion: they discover and prefer printing to cursive writing.

Cursive writing, involves the mastery of an unending flow of lengthy visual sequences. So, if and when a child insists he can print better and faster than he can do cursive, invite him to use printing for the rest of his writing life.

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Most often, they come to detest writing, and talk so much better than they write.

These students have motor implementation problems. As a parent or teacher of such a child you may have noted his awkward pencil grips. He may exert far too much pressure, write with a fistlike grasp, or maintain his pen perpendicular to the writing surface. Every muscle might seem to have put in for stabilization duty, and none remain to move the pencil through letters.

Too often the effort required is so great that the quality of ideas and spelling accuracy are eclipsed.

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Different breakdowns in graphomotor function can dishearten your otherwise highly competent child, rendering him underproductive when it comes to homework completion, test taking, and all written output in general.

For many the answer to this problem rests on a keyboard. Making use of a computer’s word processing program, they may evolve into respectable writers despite their graphomotor dysfunction.

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One cautionary note: many of the same students who have difficulties with graphomotor function experience trouble with keyboarding.

This is because keyboarding, like ordinary writing, involves rapid motor sequencing.

Yet, a computer keyboard offers a child a definite advantage: the results are likely to be much more aesthetically pleasing.

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Minds over time: Keeping a watchful eye on motor function as children age

In the earliest grades, arts and crafts pursuits take on special significance as manual mastery is valued and respected by both teachers and classmates.

Graphomotor function is a potential delicate issue. Rapid and precise letter formation can start to be a problem in kindergarten and persist stubbornly for years. Often children who can’t write won’t write.

They can lose even more ground at this age due to a serious shortage of practice.

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Computers offers students convenient opportunity to savor motor effectiveness. Those with hand writing problems can produce attractive looking text.

As noted earlier, kids facing writing problems can use word processing programs, but they also need consistent practice forming letters. Many require help developing a more workable way of holding a pen or pencil.

Finally – it is all about finding matches for students to make the most of their schooling years and have more opportunities to succeed.