Abstract
It is difficult to teach children how to make thread knots and french knots in elementary school home economics classes. We assume this difficulty is because of the different movements between teachers and children, in addition to limited experiences of the teachers on this matter. Therefore this research elucidated points of teaching the knots by focusing on children’s incorrect movements, and developed a teaching material from which students in an elementary school teacher training course could learn proper words and the points used to teach the children. In order to prove efficiency of this teaching material, we conducted an analysis of the teaching program students categorized into two groups on high or low performer groups on their ability to make thread knots. Low performers significantly improved their skills of making thread knots, than the high performers, whose skills stayed the same. As for words for teaching, more low performers tended to show improvement with the instructional words than high performers－ specifically, on average, the appropriateness of their words used to teach french knots was significantly higher than high performers. This result supports the effectiveness of the teaching material especially for low performers in helping them to develop their skills of making thread knots and learning words to teach how to make french knots. Also, we found “a video combining children’s incorrect movements with ways of making the knots” was effective in the teaching material.
