Beginning our graffiti unit

So last week was an absolute CRAZE of a week.

 I found out at the very last minute on Monday that I was going to miss not one, not two....but THREE days that week for SIOP training. THREEEE DAYS????? I thought I was going to cry myself to sleep... School has JUST started, I finally have my kiddos down in a routine, I JUST started a new unit, progress report grades are due the following MONDAY... and now I have to be out three days... LAWD HAVE MERCY. I stayed after school Tuesday for almost 3 hours getting all of my sub work together. And at the end of the week I didn't even get the work back from my students.

After the long and stressful week, knowing that my classroom was an absolute disaster at the end of every day my sub was here, I just went home and tried to forget about EVERYTHING during my nice, 3 day weekend. I've learned as a teacher, when it comes to sub days, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do sometimes. Things are going to be out of your control. And you just need to pick your battles. I feel like if I made a huge deal over every little thing that went wrong during one of my sub days, then I would be ranting for days.


That being said, we have started our next unit which is graffiti. The m
ain thing I am struggling with right now is classroom enthusiasm. With my middle schoolers, I felt like I could not get them to SHUT UP about anything! They were SO excited about art and always had SOMETHING to say in class about what we were doing. It about drove me up a wall... But now I actually miss that. Because my high schoolers now are still tired from summer. I'm really hoping that this unit wakes them up and strikes their interest because it's one of my absolute FAVORITES.

So I usually start off my graffiti unit by doing a lot of discussions. Where can you find graffiti? Where do you see the most graffiti at? What are the characteristics? What makes graffiti letters different from written letters? How do they use variation of lines to create their letter styles? Should graffiti still be considered art even if it is used for vandalism? There are so many great conversations you can have in class. It's important for me as well that I teach them the history and evolution of graffiti- how it was used during the 60s by political activists, why gang members use it and where and how a lot of cities are working to legalize it by establishing designated graffiti areas in their city.

We look at different graffiti in different cities/countries. My students usually really enjoy seeing European graffiti, it's very elaborate. Then I usually spend the day teaching them how to draw different graffiti styles.

I really enjoyed doing this with them today. I can definitely tell their confidence in their skills were rising after this because graffiti can definitely be indimidating. Here are a few of the practice sheets. (I highly recommend getting some of that elementary writing paper, it really helps them with their scale and proportions.)

 

 

~Mrs. Rogers