8th Grade Graffiti

Something magical happened today... my 8th graders actually loved a project intro.. and I mean LOVED it! 

There was excitement, laughter, and smiles galore. That. Never. Happens. I feel like in this day and age, as art teachers, we have to go above and beyond to get our students engaged... they used to get excited about art.. but here lately Ive felt like a failure because it seems like no matter what I come up with, they couldn't care less.

Until today....

They came in and immediately began designing their own Tag, or signature. They were given 10 minutes to design their tag. 

Then each student was given an envelope that looked like this:

Their card either said "Legal" or  "Illegal"  It had a location, a quote and if they were Legal, who they had to request permission from. 

The idea was that they write a positive message on a window in the building, using a window marker. If they were "Legal" they had to request permission. If they were "Illegal" they had to sneak up to their location and try not to get "caught." Teachers around the building were given 'tickets' to hand out if they found a student who did not have permission to write on a window. 

When they returned to class following their graffiti adventure, they were excited and winded! We had a big class discussion about legal vs. illegal graffiti, playing into our own graffiti experiences. The bathrooms at our school are filled with graffiti, we talked about how it is pointless and what were some of the things that we could do to make it stop. They sat, they listened, they were engaged, and it was WONDERFUL! 

Next we will play with www.graffiticreator.net to learn about different graffiti styles and flourishes. Each student will create their own name in graffiti style using various materials including watercolor-colored pencils, markers, paint, etc.