Halloween: 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
Possible follow-up ideas
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 interests.

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

The activity

Level: intermediate and above

Type/ Aim of activity: I have often used this activity as a warmer/ cooler/ ice-breaker or ‘state-creator’ as it can be easily integrated at any point in the lesson to help create a more confident and resourceful state in learners since it engages the senses in an interactive and enjoyable manner.

I find this exercise can help build students’ confidence in their ability to learn, generate follow-up discussions on their preferred learning styles, as well as promote good rapport as laughter often arises from the potentially nonsensical choice of unrelated lexis students are asked to memorize.

Before 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 by actively engaging the senses makes this activity more enjoyable and memorable.

In class

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 giant orange fish comes right through the door, flying through the air around the room above you. (I show students a picture of an orange fish, and ask them to mime the flying movement)

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

I pop the balloon (one of the exciting moments of this activity!) and out comes Johnny. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of shiny gold coins, and drops them onto the floor. The 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 Fnac 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 were entering a store). You go inside, and look in amazement … there are Cheetos bags everywhere. Nothing but Cheetos bags on every shelf.

You think to yourself, “I’m kind of hungry,” so you grab a bag of Cheetos, and open it. Yuck … it’s full of pumpkin ! You’re hungry so you take a bite of the pumpkin, and to your utter amazement, chocolate comes oozing out of the pumpkin and gets all over your new school tracksuit top.

(See yourself biting into a pumpkin, and chocolate oozing out and getting on your new tracksuit top.

Possible follow-up ideas

I have found that this activity can lead to follow-up discussions on memory, the mind, learning styles, 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.

Idea 1

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

What comes through the door? ______________
What comes out of its mouth? _______________
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 school tracksuit top, you pull out a sports magazine from your schoolbag, and try to rub the chocolate off your tracksuit top. The stain doesn’t come out, so you grab a bottle of Coca-Cola. You pour the Coke onto your new tracksuit top, and once again try to rub the chocolate off. You rub and rub (I get students to mime), and your tracksuit top magically turns into a bright yellow T-shirt.

Oh, no! You look down the aisle, and there’s an angry lion staring and roaring at you. Your heart starts to race as he starts to move towards you. All of a sudden, the lion stands on tiptoe, grabs a plastic toy guitar off the rack, and starts to play and sing. (Here, I ask students to stand up on tiptoe, mime playing a guitar, and sometimes sing a song they’ve learnt in class)

Idea 2

Let’s review the last 5 words

What did you grab to rub the chocolate off your tracksuit top? _____________
When it didn’t work, what did you next rub on your tracksuit top? _____________
As you rubbed that onto your tracksuit top, it magically turned into what? ___________
When you looked down the aisle, what did you see staring back at you? _____________
What did he grab off the rack and start to play? _____________

Idea 3

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 giant orange ____________. What comes out of its mouth? A pink ____________. 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? Bags of_____________. You open up a bag and what’s inside? _____________. You take a bite and what oozes out? _____________ It gets all over your _____________ .You grab a _____________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 starts to race as he moves towards you. All of a sudden, he stands on his tiptoes and pulls off a _____________the rack and begins to play and sing.

Reasons why I like this activity

I have found this activity useful as a way of raising students’ awareness of the rich diversity of learning styles, of the need to value and respect each student as a multi-intelligent learner, to help create a friendly learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing ideas about their learning process.

I find this exercise valuable not only to raise students’ confidence in their ability to memorize words, but also in their potential to continuously develop and improve as language learners.

Acknowledgement

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

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.