Group, Circle Time Strategies and Pre-Primary School Pupils Acquisition of Social and Motor Skills in Akwa Ibom State

This study investigated the effect of group and circle time teaching strategies on pre-primary school pupils’ acquisition of social and motor skills in Akwa Ibom South Senatorial District. six hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted the pre-test, post-test quasi experimental research design. The population of the study was all the 5091 pre-primary school pupils in public primary schools in Akwa Ibom South Senatorial District. A sample of 240 pre-primary school pupils was selected to take part in the study using multi-stage sampling procedure. Two instruments entitled “Social Skill Observation Scale (SSOS) and Motor Skill Observation Scale (MSOS)†were used in collecting data for the study. The instruments were face validated by three experts. Inter-ratter reliability was conducted for the two instruments, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to determine the reliability of the instruments, which yielded coefficients of .85 and .81 for SSOS and MSOS respectively. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses. All the hypotheses were tested at .05 level of significance. The findings of the study indicated that there is no significant difference in the acquisition of social and motor skills among pre-primary school pupils taught using circle time and group teaching method. It was concluded that circle time and group method of teaching are effective methods in developing social skills among pre-primary school pupils. It was recommended among others that teachers should make use of both group method of teaching and circle time in teaching social and motor skills among pre-primary school pupil.