THEME TEACHING LESSON NINE - GRAFFITI 2

Our purpose in practicing “graffiti” is to integrate what the class knows – its prior knowledge, what it has just learned, and opportunities for further learning within the scope of the unit and its questions. As with all collaborative activities, the graffiti model has the students learn from each other. Instead of sitting still and listening to a teacher, they are actively teaching each other with their ideas and skills from real life, as well as using their knowledge about Romeo and Juliet. The students’ opinions and knowledge are valuable and important to the class’ learning; it isn’t all from the teacher, and activities such as graffiti show this to the learners. Collaborative activities encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning, to take pride in it, and to enjoy it.

The students seat themselves in their “graffiti teams.”

Each group receives a piece of posterboard and a question. The group writes its question and team name at the top of the posterboard. The group discusses its question and writes the answer underneath the question. After three to five minutes on each question, the groups rotate the posterboards, and each group repeats the discussion-and-answering process, writing its answer underneath the previous group’s answer. The process is repeated until each group has answered each question and has its original questions in it hand. (Each group will submit these handwritten “session notes,” (which will be displayed in our classroom), however, these notes will not be formally assessed.)

When all the questions have reached their original group answers, each group reads its original question and then presents the collaborative answers of the whole class. As time allows, students may summarize the answers on the board.