Governor Phil Murphy • Lt. Governor Tahesha Way

Graffiti Day

Objectives

Text graffiti is a comprehensive learning strategy for students to use their analytical skills to make inferences about the main idea of a text. Students will be given pieces of a larger text, one line at a time and asked to answer questions to help them put together the whole story. This activity gets the students up and moving, thinking outside the box, and engaging in discussions with their classmates. In this activity, students will be able to: 

  1. Evaluate portions of texts in order to make inferences regarding Holocaust survivor experiences. 
  2. Execute a close read of the entire text to develop a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of a Holocaust survivor. 
  3. Distinguish the value of context as it relates to their understanding of the whole story. 

A graffiti board acts as an in-person discussion board where students will respond to essential questions designed around the text graffiti activity. The teacher will write two or three essential questions on a large paper or the board that the students will reflect on and write their responses. The students will use the “Lifting the Text” learning strategy from Learning for Justice and find text evidence for their analysis of the questions. In this activity, students will be able to: 

  1. Analyze essential questions relating to the text they’ve evaluated and the overall historical concepts from the previous activity. 
  2. Engage in a written discussion to demonstrate connections made between essential questions and core text.
  3. Support their understandings using textual evidence from the given text and other related texts provided by the teacher.

The text graffiti and graffiti board activities can be completed individually or done in conjunction with each other. For the purposes of this activity, they are done in two days.

Examples of text graffiti and graffiti boards using these suggested texts are linked here

Ensure clear desk space and a large board or piece of paper for graffiti board. Allowing room for questions, comments, quotes, and ideas will help students gain as much as possible from the activity. 

To expand on the idea of a single story and the importance of multiple perspectives, show your students this TedTalk with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “The Danger of a Single Story.”

*Adjusted from Facing History & Learning for Justice

  1. Before the students arrive to class, print and cut each excerpt from Leo Ullman’s book and tape one to each desk in the classroom. Print the list of activity prompts and tape one copy on each of the desks. 
  2. Leave a stack of post-it notes on each desk for students to take notes and answer the activity prompts on. 
  3. When the students come to class, instruct them to read the text on their own desk and make comments about their interpretations. Remind students to comment directly on the text in front of them (i.e., not "I think this is sad," but, "I think this is sad because the author uses words like devastation and chaos to describe her homeland.")
  4. Signal students to move to another desk. Provide enough time for students to read and respond to the text (3-5 minutes). Repeat step three. 
  5. Remind students to respond to each other's comments. Creating this thread makes the transition to group discussion more effective. Depending on class size and the lesson objective, limit the number of quotes students comment on. 
  6. The students do not have to visit each desk, but each excerpt must have notes taken on it. Plan to have each student read and comment on 7-8 excerpts.
  7. Bring the group together and conduct a class discussion on the pieces they have all read. Pose questions like, “What do you think the larger text is about?” “What information are you missing that you wish you had?” 
  8. Read the larger text aloud to the class. 
  9. After reading the entire text with the class, facilitate a discussion, asking questions such as: “What things were you correct about?” “What things were you wrong about?” “How did having limited access to the text before reading it affect your overall understanding of it?” 
  10. For their exit ticket from class, pass out a 3-2-1 assessment prompt to evaluate student understanding before moving into day two.

*Adjusted from Facing History & Learning for Justice

1. Group your students into groups of four. In the case of an odd number, three is better than five.

2. Distribute one of each supplementary text to each member of the group, so each student in the group has a different text. (Kaplan, Hirsch, Holzer and Frank) 

3. Each student should closely read their assigned text by highlighting or underlining important information as they read. 

4. Work the groups in jigsaw to allow students to collaborate and so that every student has an understanding of each of the texts. 

5. While the students are working, write these three essential questions on the board: 

  • How does reading multiple perspectives of people’s lived Holocaust experiences contribute to your understanding of the Holocaust? 
  • How did reading five different stories of the Holocaust reflect the sentiments in the “The Danger of a Single Story?”
  • If these five people were gathered together, what commonalities would they discuss? 

6. Before the activity begins, contract with the students in terms of what an appropriate response is and how to express one's discomfort with something in an appropriate way. Students should be told that they are to remain silent during this activity.      Make sure students know that several of them can write at once. Students can write their own response to the prompt as well as respond to the questions and ideas that other students have written. They should draw lines connecting their comments to those of other students. Some teachers require all students to post at least one question and comment to the Graffiti Board.

7. Students should read the essential questions from their desks and when they have formulated their comment or response they should go up to the board and write it. Allow your students sufficient time to read and respond to their classmates. To incorporate the Lifting the Text teaching strategy, require students to pull quotes from the excerpts to support their comments on the board. 

8. Once students have completed their graffiti board, review the board with the class, discussing different comments and questions that came up for them. Ask your students to point out some of the things they noticed as they engaged in the graffiti board and what stood out to them. Ask them to write a “generalization” on an index card before leaving for the day, looking for them to summarize in a sentence the key concepts of the lesson from the past two day, like “Holocaust survivors experiences are all different.”