Studies suggest that incorporating core academic subjects into physical education (PE) stimulates the development of both motor and cognitive skills in primary school students. For example, several experiments show that children’s participation in Eduball, i.e., a method that uses educational balls with printed letters, numbers, and other signs, improves their physical fitness while simultaneously developing their mathematical and language skills. However, the question of who should conduct such classes to make them most effective (regular classroom teachers, physical education teachers, or maybe both in cooperation?) remains unanswered. Here, we replicated a previous Eduball experiment, but now, instead of one experimental group, there were three. In the first, Eduball-classes were conducted by the classroom teacher, in the second, by the physical education teacher, and in the third, collaboratively. After one year intervention, all experimental groups significantly improved both their cognitive (mathematical, reading, and writing) and gross motor (locomotor and object control) skills, and these effects were larger than in the control group participating in traditional PE. Importantly, there were no differences in progression between the Eduball-groups. Thus, our study demonstrates that methods linking PE with cognitive tasks can be effectively used by both PE specialists and general classroom teachers.

Open Access License:This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. abstract BackgroundThe aim of the study was to determine fundamental movement skills of elementary school first-graders and to seek whether fundamental movement skills correlate with the pupils' age and gender. Material/MethodsThe study involved students in the first grade of elementary school in Krosno. The study was conducted at the beginning of the 2015/2016 school year. A total of 98 pupils (43 girls and 55 boys) aged six and seven were tested, using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2nd Edition. ResultsThe study showed that the results of fundamental movement skills depend on the children's age and gender. Older girls achieved better results in locomotor and object control skills than six-year-old girls. The analysis revealed that boys achieved better scores than girls in the object control skills subtest. ConclusionsThe findings of this study demonstrated that the results can serve as an argument in the debate on the validity of reducing the school age in Poland. Understanding the importance of fundamental movement skills and awareness of irregularities in motor skills may help to prevent children's later school problems.