Graffiti Boards- Possible End of the Year Activity

Graffiti Boards

I love this strategy and it is very simply incorporated into any subject area. I think it would make a great end of the year activity to sum up the year and really appeal to those visual learners.

A few years when I taught Grade 8, my students and I read Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World. There is a part where Marc Keilburger talks about going to Thailand and working in the slums. 

He learned about poverty, homelessness and child labour. He speaks about how he came with "teenage baggage" and left wiser. So as a class we brainstormed what could be described at teenage baggage and then the students graffiti-ed it on to posters. One side is "positive teenage baggage", and one side is "negative teenage baggage." After we read this section the students were given a piece of chart paper and coloured markers. I told them to create a "visual representation" of their ideas and responses. They could use words, pictures, symbols, colours, quotes anything they wanted to splash their ideas on the page. 

It's a great process to watch as they debate and attempt to choose which are the best words to describe their thoughts and ideas. They come up with great symbols and really powerful words to describe their thinking. I usually have them present their graffiti to the class as well so that the other students can see their thoughts on paper.

Here are some of the individual graffiti work that the students did after working in groups. They were asked to graffiti their own idea of teenage baggage; one side with positive baggage and the other side with negative baggage.

I have used this strategy in many lessons: as a pre-reading activity to see that they know about important themes or vocabulary, as a way to explain complex concepts from a social science lesson, and once even I had my class retell the 5 acts of MacBeth entirely in graffiti! It was awesome.

So what are some the possible uses as an end of the year activity??

- choose a picture of a school bus and have the students graffiti about their field trips they attended

- use the outline of a student and have the students splash words that show what they have learned this year

- hand out a picture of the sun and students can graffiti their summer plans

- distribute the outline of a book and students can graffiti about the best book they read this year

- you could create a very large outline  of the entire year's calendar on kraft paper and have the entire class make a graffiti board together of their favourite memories of each month

The possibilities are endless!!!

Online Resources:

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