International Dot Day!

September 15, 2014
by Mrs. Morrow

Have you ever felt like you had no creative talent whatsoever?  Many times we feel like we aren't any good at art... or writing... or math... or sports... or whatever it might be.  In reality, sometimes all it takes is to "make a mark" and see where it takes you.

In the story The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, the main character Vashti experiences just that.  When her art teacher asks her to draw a dot and "sign it," she learns to "own up to" her work.  When Vashti sees her artwork behind the teacher's desk "all framed in swirly gold," she experiences what it's like to have someone believe in her.  This leads to Vashti trying, through repetitive experimentation and practice, to create even BETTER dots. Vashti's creative accomplishments are celebrated at the class art show and she becomes an inspiration to future artists-- all because she "made her mark" and created that first dot.

September 15 is "International Dot Day" and we celebrated it together in English 7.

We started by designing our own individual dots- with markers instead of sentences in our Writer's Notebooks.

Then we listened to the story The Dot and discussed its meaning for each of us.

Mrs. Morrow told us a story about a time when she met Peter Reynolds in person and shared creative ideas with a group of friends.

We used the COLar Mix app on the iPads to bring our dots to life through Augmented Reality.

 Finally, we "connected the dots" by writing our reflections of the day and posting them to our blogs.

We all contributed to a class dot gallery, each adding our own individual creative "mark" and, of course, signing it!

All in all, September 15's English7 class was a day of celebrating creativity-- for each and every one of us.  We'll be ready to infuse that creativity into all our future writing projects-- and thereby making our mark on the world!