BOOM-BOOM-POW/A Group Portrait

is a collaborative self- and group- portrait done in words & images by 21 9th and 10th grade students in a day-long class at The Wheatley School, Long Island, NY. 

 

This project is a quick-take version of the CSU Tell Me Why mural project. Through guided exercises the students used their smart phones to take 'selfies' without taking snaps of themselves—no faces allowed, but images that suggested 'self'—so that they had a handful of images to select as their final visual self-portrait. Then while divided into groups of 3, I taught them how to write simple hay(na)ku poems—lines of 1, 2 & then 3 words—in a trio-chain, texting one another in turns acording to the 'theme' of the moment—who/where/why—to create a handful of stanzas for their trio poems.

 

The result was a class portrait and 21-person chain poem, BOOM-BOOM-POW.

 

The project was introduced via a Power Point Presentation & slideshow—see PDF below—along with a mash-up of Frankie Lyman & the Teenagers and Lady Gaga that set the tone for the day.