Wednesday 12 June 2013

The Wonder of Giraffes


       The Wonder of Giraffes – How we can use play to increase our exam results.
The other evening saw a lively and interesting session at the study surgery that I run, with great beams of laughter and accurate recall emerging from a 1st year management student. Some days before I had persuaded this anxious student who was convinced that he would not do well in his exam to let the inner child come out in him and draw out of the study armoury a weapon that would trigger his memory and send any awkward exam running for cover. Yes you guessed it…… it was a 8 inch soft toy giraffe. This is what was missing from his repertoire of revision tools. Of course he seemed rather bemused at my stories of unforgetful elephants, confidence building teddy bears, and versatile Pokémon’s, not to mention the dreaded versatility of the premier-league football team strips. Yes, I pronounced, if your memory is struggling, we need movement, colour and of course fun.
The students face was flabbergasted, but I explained how previous students had excelled in these dark arts, and that once fluent in transferring data to movement of the toy or object in question, he would with a wiggle here, or a twist there, be able to access the data. With only a few days before his fearful exam, he nodded his head and went out no doubt believing me to be totally bonkers, and obviously touched by hot summer sun.

He persevered and I met him the other evening, and he had his list of authors and studies, to recall. Of course we had gone over structure of the answers for these types of essay questions, but it was this mark making data that was the source of his high anxiety.  As we sat at the table, he brought out his bright yellow Giraffe and placed it on the table, and a bonny friendly thing it was too. And so we began that hour of extracting data from his mind, the first few minutes were difficult, as he struggled he needed more triggering. ‘Don’t just touch the bloody leg, wiggle and move it about man, I cried. And so he wiggled it more, and in doing so, out poured the first bits of his author and theory list.  As we learn very young through nursery rhymes, singing, movement and visual stimuli helps us to remember the lines, I can still sing Humpty Dumpty, with all the actions after all these years. And so the student, with me beside him waving my arms like a conductor, bringing song to his boring and rigid data, began to sparkle and got into a confident performance, reciting his allocation of each questions data to his Giraffe, so the toy having three or four questions attached. The more he waved the giraffes tail, so more data emerged.
After this session, I told him to go home, rest and then close his eyes, and imagine where the data was on his giraffe. Like a martial arts master directing his blind-folded student in the craft of sword wielding in darkness, so this method of visualisation and attachment could be transferred to his giraffe. And between each question he was to have five minutes to close his eyes for atunement, and see in his head where all this data of distributed.   And so we come to the conclusion of this story. I have come from a long day teaching to hear from this student that he did wonderfully, that the giraffe sat on his desk proved its worth and served it master well. The information flowed like water, and the names, dates and theories ran to the paper like loyal lap dogs. One can only imagine the scene in that exam room, where in the strict silence of exam conditions, the student was moving a colourful giraffe in his hands, with his eyes closed, whispering in song his mantra….. “on the left leg is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs…. “

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