This week I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the upcoming Exam Mastery Workshop (woohoo!) and one of the videos I always show students in the workshop is a famous ‘attention test’ with the two basketball teams and the gorilla.
Yeah, weird right!
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s how it goes:
There’s an official sounding man who tells you to count how many times the white team passes the basketball.
You then – if you’re anything like me and likes to pass any kind of quiz or test 😉 – diligently start watching this video footage of a team in white and a team in black each passing a basketball around.
The video ends and the official sounding man comes back on and tells you that if you got the answer 13 then you are right.
Again, if you’re like me, you set off a few mental party poppers and give yourself a good-old pat on the back…
But then he carries on to say ‘but did you spot the man dressed up in the gorilla outfit?’
“Whaaaat? I was watching so closely, concentrating so hard – of course I’d have seen that!” you think.
So then they replay the video and this time you see it.
There’s a fully grown person in a gorilla suit walking in,doing a bit of dancing amongst the basketballers and then walking back out again.
It’s kinda fun.
But more relevantly to us, it shows something REALLY important for students when it comes to exams.
Because so many students are focused on the subject content when it comes to study and exams.
However, what is just as important (you could even argue moreso if you really wanted to) is their knowledge and understanding of command words and the other 5 elements of exam technique.
Because spotting the command words, the cues and the ‘Sherlock Clues
(and just so you know – command words and cues are both technical terms. Sherlock clues is more of a ‘Katie term’! )
is something that students aren’t often taught or trained to do.
But these key words in any exam Q, or essay, or assignment, are precisely what tell them HOW they need to convey that subject knowledge, in the way the exam question demands and in the way that the mark scheme requires.
So once they know what they are looking for and how to spot these critical keys to successfully answering any exam or essay Q, they can’t HELP BUT see them!
(They are kinda like a dancing gorilla on the page – though admittedly probably not quite as fun – but definitely a whole lot more useful.) 🙂
But if your teen hasn’t been told what they are, had them explained with examples, and doesn’t know how to identify them, and understand them, and respond to them for themselves, then they’ll likely gloss over them, in favour of focusing only on the topic being asked about.
Eek.
If they’ve ever had the situation where they’ve written about the correct subject content, but gotten only a few of the marks available, then this will be why.
They’ve responded on topic, but not in the way or to the level that them command and mark scheme require.
Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen any more!
Katie
P.S. Scroll down and leave me a comment, let me know if you’ve ever seen that video and whether you did or didn’t see the gorilla the first time 🙂
