The Pyramid of Learning

The Pyramid of Learning is a way of looking at the whole child.  It is an illustration that depicts a general idea of our children’s foundational skills, and what other skills build upon those. The pyramid showcases the skills preceding the academic learning, the so-called building blocks a child has to develop in order to build well-grounded, stable academic skills. This information is useful, as it helps breakdown skill sets into underlying characteristics and helps prioritize what to address.

This illustration outlines the foundational skills at the bottom of the pyramid, and the skills that are supported by the foundational skills on the tiers above. Once the bottom tiers of the pyramid are adequate, the tiers above can be more efficiently developed. Addressing the skills in this order is known as utilizing the bottom-up approach.

 The very foundation of the pyramid is a child's central nervous system which is closely linked to their sensory systems. Adequate sensorimotor development is built on adequate registration and processing of sensory information (from the tactile, vestibular, proprioception, olfactory, visual, auditory and gustatory systems). Sensory motor development includes postural security, awareness of two sides of the body, motor planning, body scheme, reflex maturity and ability to screen input. This then supports perceptual motor development including eye-hand coordination, ocular motor control, postural adjustment, auditory language skills, visual-spatial perception and attention center functions. 

 Children are referred to occupational therapists for various reasons.  Most of the time our referrals are functional problems that is affecting the "pointy end" of the pyramid. It is then the role of the therapist to see if there are underlying issues that need to be addressed.  Can the therapist help the child gain new skills, modify a task or the way the task is performed or does the therapist help the child to compensate for the difficulty? This is all part of the clinical reasoning that a therapist figures out.