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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