The History of Graffiti

Overview

In this activity, students conduct research into the history of graffiti. They present their findings using an on line platform – we used Prezi but you may prefer to use Instagram, Pinterest or Glogster.

Description

Show your students that graffiti has been around for millions of years and what they see on the wall of their city is only the latest evolution of this ancient art. We like to start by showing them pictures found by searching “Real Cave Art” on Google images.

Once you studied and discussed the images, organise students into groups of three and ask them to search for more videos, images and other materials to review the history of graffiti throughout the ages.

Ask them to present their findings to the class using Prezi www.prezi.com. Each group will have to to create a Prezi account which is free as long as they click on ‘Public Account’. This does mean that anyone can view their presentations so it is important that they are mindful of how much personal information they use in their presentations. When their account is set up, ask them to click on ‘Explore’ so that they can get ideas and be inspired by existing Prezis.

Time needed 2 hours.

Resources

• On line searching tools.

• Prezi account www.prezi.com

Hints and tips

Let students use any resource they choose to find and store their research materials but do recap on the importance of using material that is license free.
You can suggest some key words for the research on the interactive board. You may decide to use fewer search tools in order to make the session more effective and the results more focused.
As with all searches, in order to minimize the risk of students being exposed to inappropriate content, adjust the filters on the search engine or browser you are using so that unsuitable images, videos or other content are excluded. Other solutions may be to have a heavily firewalled system or some dedicated software that blocks inappropriate content before anyone sees it. It is usual for these precautions to have already been taken by the school or local education authority.

–> GRAFFITI