Editorial
for more ideas by Lauren Damas, see HLT, year 12; issue 5; October 2010

Christmas: Activating Your Memory Through Your Senses!

Lauren Damas, Portugal

Lauren Damas is a teacher at British Council Porto, Portugal.
E-mail: Lauren.Damas@pt.britishcouncil.org

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Introduction
The activity
Reasons why I like this activity
Acknowledgement

Introduction

I have found the following exercise on ‘activating memory through the senses’ useful as a quick confident reminder to students that they are able to memorize unrelated words without writing them down by exposure to a multi-sensory learning environment. I find it works well as a warmer, particularly with younger students. I use realia, pictures, mime, feeling, tasting, and anything that is appropriate and will help them memorize words more effectively.

This exercise is easy to adapt, and I change the words in bold (the words students are required to memorize) according to learners’ level of ability, age and interest.

I give students a series of short paragraphs at a time, and ask them to listen.

The activity

1. Teacher chooses words learners are required to memorize according to students’ age, interests, level of ability and season/ time of the academic year by simply changing the words in bold.
2. Teacher brings various types of prompts and realia appropriate to learners’ age, level and interests. When possible I like to bring real food, balloons to pop, music and songs that I think will appeal to a variety of learning styles. I find that engaging the different senses makes this activity more enjoyable and memorable.

1. Teacher reads out loud the exercise on activating memory, and asks students to follow instructions.

Here it goes

Look across the room at the door that’s directly in front of you, and pretend you hear a loud banging on the other side of the door. (I get students to mime or even bang on their desks or wall, not too loudly though)

Suddenly, a blue angel comes right through the door, flying through the air around the room above you. (I show students a picture of a blue angel, and ask them to mime the flying movement)

The blue angel opens its wings, and a green balloon comes out, floating through the air, and guess who is inside the balloon? >Santa is inside the green balloon, looking down at you, smiling and waving. (I ask students to look up and visualize the green balloon coming out of the angel’s wings. Imagine that Santa is in the balloon, wave back at him and say out loud, “Hi, Santa”)

I pop the green balloon (one of the exciting moments of this activity!) and out comes Santa. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of shiny silver coins, and drops them onto the floor. The silver coins, magically move into the shape of a star. (I get students to touch and feel the coins, and move them so that they form the shape of a star)

Inside the star is a Marks and Spencer store and you think, “Great, I need to do some shopping anyway”, so you enter the store. (I get students to stand up and move as if they are entering a store). You go inside, and are astonished to see Christmas stockingseverywhere. Nothing but Christmas stockings on every shelf!

You are curious so you grab a Christmas stocking and look inside it. Yuck … it’s full of Brussels sprouts.

You’re hungry so you take a bite of a Brussels sprout, and to your utter amazement, chocolate comes oozing out of the Brussels sprout and gets all over your new penguin sweater. (imagine yourself biting into a Brussels sprout, chocolate oozing out, and getting all over your new penguin sweater)

Now, let’s stop and review the first 10 words.

What comes through the door? ______________
What comes out of its wings? _______________
Who is in the balloon? ____________________
What does he pull out of his pocket, and drop onto the floor? ___________
They magically move into what shape? _________________
What store is inside that shape? ____________________
What’s on every shelf? ____________________
What’s inside the bag that you take a bite of? ___________________
What oozes out when you bite into it? ____________________
What article of clothing does it ooze onto? ___________________

Let’s continue. Since you’ve got chocolate all over your new penguin sweater you pull out your Reader’s Digest magazine from your schoolbag, and try to rub the chocolate off your new penguin sweater. The stain doesn’t come out, so you grab a bottle of Coca-Cola. You pour the Coke onto your new penguin sweater, and once again try to rub the chocolate off. You rub and rub (I ask students to mime), and your penguin sweater magically turns into a bright yellow t-shirt.

Oh, no! You look down the aisle, and there’s an angry red-nosed reindeer staring at you. Your heart starts to race as it starts moving towards you. All of a sudden, the angry reindeer stands on tiptoe, grabs a plastic toy guitar from the shelf, and begins to play and sing. (Here, I get students to stand up on tiptoe, mime playing a guitar, and we sing a Christmas carol we have learnt at Christmas time such as, ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas.’

Let’s review the last 5 words,

What did you grab to rub the chocolate off your new penguin sweater? _____________
When it didn’t work, what did you next rub on your new penguin sweater? _________
As you rubbed that onto your, it magically turned into what? ___________
When you looked down the aisle, what did you see staring back at you? _____________
What did he grab from the shelf and begin to play? _____________

To finish off, I ask students to answer the following questions. If they get stuck on an answer, I ask them to visualise, mime …

You hear a loud banging on the door. What comes through the door flying through the air? A blue ____________. What comes out of its wings? A green ____________. Who is inside, looking down at you, smiling and waving? ____________ . What does he pull out of his pocket? _____________. He drops them on the floor, and they magically form what shape? A_____________. What’s in the middle of the shape? A _____________store. You go inside, and what do you see on every shelf? _____________. You look inside a Christmas stocking and what do you see? _____________. You take a bite and what oozes out? _____________ It gets all over your _____________ .You grab your __________from inside your schoolbag and start to rub off your_____________. The stain doesn’t come out, so you pour _____________ on _____________and rub some more. It magically turns your _____________ into a_____________. You look down the aisle and see an angry _____________staring at you. You heart begins to race as it starts moving towards you. All of a sudden, it stands on his tiptoes and pulls off a _____________ from the shelf and begins to play and sing, ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas…’

Reasons why I like this activity

I have found that this exercise can help build students’ confidence in their ability to memorize words, as well as generate follow-up discussions on memory, the mind, multiple intelligences and anything related to learning/ education.

Learners usually enjoy sharing ideas on how they learn best and why they think they do so, which promotes reflection and raises awareness of their preferred learning styles.

This is valuable feedback for the teacher as a way of getting to know students better, and integrate activities in follow-up lessons that best suit a group of learners so as to maximize their learning, and enjoyment of the learning process.

This activity can also promote good rapport as laughter often arises from the potentially nonsensical choice of unrelated lexis students are asked to memorize.

Most important of all, I have found that this simple activity can inspire students to believe in their own potential to continuously develop as learners; and such a belief is worthy of nourishing and valuing in a learning context and community.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to K. Scott. I learnt this activity from an article on learning and memory by K. Scott.

The Methodology and Language for Primary Teachers course can be viewed here
The Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligences course can be viewed here