What's Your Passion?

Help your students find their passion by participating in global events that inspire creativity and innovation!

Dot Day-ish

 

International Dot Day is celebrated on or about September 15th....ish. Thank goodness for the "ish" because this year we couldn't stick to just one day. We celebrated for a whole week! 

Betsye Sargeant of The Phoenix School in Salem, Mass. and I collaborated on the Dot Day Recipe Project. Originally created by librarian Matthew Winner, this project allowed for us to really delve deep into art, technology, and language arts. 

In a nutshell:

• Read the books The Dot and Ish by Peter H. Reynolds. 

• Students explore with paint and create color recipes using primary colors and white.

• Students exchange recipes with another school and use the color to create a work of art. 

• Students view each other's work, post on their blogs, and write thank-you notes to each other. 

• example of a "thank you" blog post: click HERE

For the full lesson plan click HERE

Please enjoy our Dot Day 2014 video!

The Dot Big Screen Book - click HERE for more info

        

Low Tech and High Tech Dot Days

This is the first year that I celebrated International Dot Day in my classroom.  We actually celebrated it on two days: Monday September 16 and Friday September 20.

The Monday celebration was very "low-tech". A guest came and read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds and discussed how we can encourage each other and make our mark in the world.  Then we painted with our never-before-used-paint-sets. The students really enjoyed creating their own dot and making their mark. The dots made a beautiful hall display.

On Friday, we went "high-tech" by inviting guests to bring their Apple and Android devices so we could bring dots to life using the augmented reality app ColAR.  The students colored dots on special color sheets printed from the ColAR app site. When we aimed the devices at the color sheet, the dots became spinnng, bouncing spheres that multplied and changed sizes!

Use these two images to check out ColAR app. Just go to the site and download the app to your Apple or Android device.  Once dowloaded, click on play, aim it at one of the images, and watch it come to life! Make sure the whole image is in your screen. It will turn purple and then come to life!

results

results

resources: http://mrsmorgansstars.edublogs.org/