We have not mastered the rope over the head part.
I’m working with a student who has an IEP goal of jumping rope. It’s to be able to do it 20 times forward and backwards. It should be pretty simple.
But like most things with kids, when you think they are at one place you quickly find out that they are further back than you expected.
He doesn’t have a lot of core strength and is lacking in coordination. I think he’s pretty typical for a third grader. And so when he jumps he has a very difficult time keeping his feet and knees together.
He prefers to hop over the rope one leg at a time as opposed to jumping with both feet at the same time. He also like to jump very high and far. So quickly, like a kernel of popcorn he’s either a mile away from the rope so discombobulated that he can’t make the jump.
Here is the progression and some verbal cues I’m using to help him.
In steps 1 and 2 he continues even if he makes a mistake. In step 3 I’ve been stopping the exercise if he its the rope.
This progression is going to take a while to master. We do each of the steps every day because I think he needs the conditioning effects of a lot of repetitions. By making changes the progressions become modalities and keeps him interested.
Jumping over the swinging rope is important because he must get used to the timing of the rope as well as the benefits of tracking it with his eyes.
We’ve been doing this once a week for about a month. He is improving but definitely has not mastered it. The best we’ve gotten is 8 jumps over the swinging rope.
I’m sure he’ll get there.