The Practice Method

The practice method is broken down into a whole practice and a partial practice, this refers to the skills being demonstrated and learned either by practicing it whole or in parts with progressions.  The part practice gets broken down in two three sections, 1.  Simplifies skill, 2.  Allows learners to experience early success, 3.  Permits practice on problematic components without wasting time on those already mastered.    The whole practice is sometimes beneficial over the practice for example, an organized task or interdependent skill such as a cartwheel cannot be broken down into parts or that would be difficult to do so it is easier to teach as a whole, versus a complexity task which can be represented through a swimmer and the freestyle stroke because would be easier to learn if it was broken down into parts.  There are other factors as well such as the capability of the learner, the equipment available, and environment can all be factors in the approach one takes when teaching skill.  When deciding how to teach the skill whether it be a whole or part practice keep in mind that skills that are high in organization and low complexity usually are easier to learn through whole practice, but skills with low organization and high complexity are usually taught with part practice, even with these two “rules” keep in mind that they do not account for all the possible combinations of organizations and complexity.  Figure