Graffiti Method of Teaching

On monday, I had a wonderful opportunity to try out Graffiti teaching with the ideal class - a room full of passionate Physics educators. The Graffiti method came from the website PEEL in Practice (http://peelweb.org/index.cfm?resource=pip), and I applied this method to a unit review of optics.

We started our class with a bit of introductory discussion about how everyone's weekend was, what they did on the weekend, etc. Then I explained that this was a review class, and I divided the class into 4 groups (2 or 3 students in each group), and gave each group a sheet of paper with a moderately challenging question that had multiple answers. The questions were:

- What is reflection? Explain using an analogy.
- What is your favourite electromagnetic wave? What properties and/or applications make that wave your favourite?
- What is refraction? Explain using an analogy.
- Choose an application of the lens. How does the lens work in that application?

The group talked and decided on an answer, which was written down in pretty coloured markers on the pages of paper. After about 3 minutes, the papers were rotated to different groups. The new group was then told that they could "cheat" off the previous group - they were encouraged to use the previous ideas combined with their own ideas to answer the question in the best way possible. The papers kept rotating until every group had a chance to write.

Then I switched up the groups and redistributed the papers. The new groups' task was to summarize what the class knows about refraction, reflection, electromagnetic waves, or lenses depending on what sheet they received, and present this summary in 1 minute to the class. This is what they came up with!

Finally we ended with some discussion about how effective the class found the Graffiti method, and I received some very helpful feedback. The "students" told me that they felt rushed - they would have appreciated 5 minutes instead of 3 minutes to work together as a group answering the questions. They said that they felt engaged and involved in their learning, and they appreciated the different colours and the freedom to draw or write on the paper. Some of the "students" especially liked the fact that they were allowed to "cheat" off the other groups' ideas - this made exchanging ideas more fun. They also appreciated the relaxed start of the lesson with a little chat about the weekend before launching into the activity.

Interestingly enough, the Think, Pair, Share method of teaching which happened to follow my Graffiti lesson is strikingly similar. It was interesting, however, to see how very differently such a similar teaching style could be taught very differently by another teacher. In his lesson, he used Think, Pair, Share as a unit opener to get students to think about a concept, and he appealed more to the auditory learners whereas I went straight for the visual learners. It was helpful to see how a similar method could easily be tuned to different learning styles almost unintentionally due to our own personal learning styles.