learn basic, functional motor skills needed for adult life.

MOVE -- Mobile Opportunity via Education -- is the activity based curriculum designed to teach them how to increase their movement independence.

And MOVE programme coordinator Virginia Paleg of Washington D.C. has spent the last two days on the Island teaching 42 participants from the education community and six families how to implement the curriculum.

Students with severe development disabilities are taught to sit, stand and walk, she told The Royal Gazette .

This will help them function better in the community and at home and make them easier to care for, she said.

MOVE was originally designed to meet the needs of students over the age of seven who had not developed the physical skills necessary to support themselves when they were either seated, standing or taking steps.

It was developed after non-ambulatory students began graduating from public education at the age of 22 with fewer skills than when they entered at age three.

But it was expanded to include infants and adults and students with orthopaedic handicaps after it was proved to be successful, she said.

Orange Valley School principal Geraldine Lambert said she came across MOVE while at a conference in Florida last March.

She said it was the programme she had been searching for over the years and her staff and parent teacher association greeted it so enthusiastically that she decided to organise Mrs. Paleg's trip here for the workshop.