Open & Closed Skills Task
Category: Sport Skills · 2-page printable PDF · Ages 7-8, 9-10 · Free for ConnectedPE members
A skill-acquisition task built around the open–closed skill continuum — one of the most useful classification tools in sports science. Students place a range of sport skills along the continuum, justify each placement, and analyse how environmental predictability shapes the demands on the performer: the free-throw shooter controls almost everything; the midfielder controls almost nothing.
The justification step is where the learning lives. Arguing *why* a golf drive sits nearer the closed pole than a tennis return forces students to reason about stability, interference and decision load — and to recognise that most skills live between the poles, not at them. That reasoning transfers directly to practice design: closed skills reward repetition, open skills demand variable, game-like practice.
Two pages, Years 7–10 through senior secondary. Use it in a skill-acquisition topic, as a theory lesson between practicals, or as the conceptual setup for a Game Sense unit where open-environment decision-making is the whole point.
What students learn
Students classify skills along the open–closed continuum, justify classification decisions, and explain how environmental predictability influences skill execution and learning.
Topics: Skill Acquisition, Skill Classification, Open Skills, Closed Skills, Senior Secondary
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