The Portrait Gallery

The Portrait Gallery

The aim is to develop student interaction by collaboratively drawing portraits of each other.

1. The teacher splits the class two equal halves - Group A and Group B.
2. Group A forms an inner circle facing outward and group B forms an outer circle facing inward.
3. Each person in group A should be facing one person from Group B. Members of Group A, the inner circle, are the subjects of the portraits and Group B are the artists.
4. Every member of group B should have paper and different coloured thick markers.  They should start by writing the name of their subject at the top of the paper.
5. The artists in group B begin drawing their subjects in Group A.
6. After 15 seconds, the teacher shouts “Rotate!” and the artists rotate one step to the left while handing their paper to the person to their right. Each artist is now standing in front of a new subject with that subject’s portrait in their hands. When they rotate, the artists must keep their markers.
7. The students continue to rotate around in 10-15 second intervals until all the artists in Group B have rotated and have drawn all members of Group A.  Each portrait should be developed and quite messy. When the artists arrive back at their original subject, they hand the portrait to that person.
8. The teacher leads a discussion on the outcome of the activity.

This activity develops team working as it allows students to work collaboratively to create a portrait of each member of the class. The portraits should be very colourful and visually stimulating and could be displayed on the classroom wall.