Graffiti Model

 Graffiti Model

This is a great cooperative learning model that gets students up and moving and interacting with their classmates, and there are lots of versions--gallery strolls, silent graffitis, etc. This model can also be used as a diagnostic or formative assessment. The key is individual accountability. 

Steps to the Model

1. Prepare the graffiti questions and group number and composition. 
• This step is done prior to class. 
• If you have a large class and only a few stations, you can make more than one of each station in order to keep the groups small and interactive. 
• Prompts can be questions, case scenarios, photographs, hypothetical scenarios, political cartoons, or whatever. Whatever you choose, your prompts need to be open-ended; otherwise groups will simply copy the responses of those that came before. 
2. Distribute materials. 
• You may assign groups a specific color to write with to track which comments came from whom, or not. 
3. Group answer questions. 
• Give students 3-5 minutes to discuss and respond to prompts. 
• Give them timing cues so they can wrap up. 
4. Exchange questions. 
• Students can agree or disagree or add on to the previous students' comments. 
• Continue until all students have time to answer all questions. 
• Groups should rotate their scribes so all are able to participate. 
• The teacher wanders around listening in for misconceptions or to ask provocative questions to keep students engaged. Conversely, depending on your purpose for the activity, you may want to stay completely out of it (e.g. if you're using the activity as a pre-assessment). 
5. Return to the original question, summarize, and make generalizations. 
• You can have students turn the sheet over to make their summaries and generalizations on the back. 
6. Share information. 
• Each group shares their generalizations with the rest of the class. 
• The teacher can fill in any holes. 
7. Evaluate the Group Process. 
• This step encompasses both content and metacognitive evaluation--in other words, the what and the how. Students need to be held individually accountable for the information (the what) but they also need to understand for themselves why this process did or did not help them learn the material (the how). 
• You must hold all individuals accountable for all information, not just the information on their original poster.