Making Our Mark - A Celebration of Dot Day!

International Dot Day comes around once a year on or around September 15.  Inspired by the book The Dot  by Peter Reynolds, students are encouraged to be creative and make their mark on the world. At Northside, we decided this would be a great opening to the school year as we work to build community and learn about one another.  This also served as a great lead-in to our first Project Based Learning unit entitled,  "Making Our Mark From Past to Present - A Northside History Project" in which all students will begin exploring the history of our school and how people in the past have made their mark at Northside long before our new building constructed.  Click on the video below to check out all the fun that was had on Dot Day 2013!



 

Thanks to a grant from The Public School Foundation we were able to purchase a copy of The Dot for each teacher at Northside to share with their students the first week of school.  We decorated our doors and hallways with all the ways we were going to make our mark as both students and staff.  

 

We put our iPads to work as we got super creative using an augmented reality app to bring our creative dots to life in 3D.  We had so much fun being creative with this new technology and the students were really generating some great shots that captured their 3D creations.  

 

 

 In the library we also created a celebri-dot display that highlighted various authors who got in on the fun and created their own creative dots in support of Dot Day!  We paired each author's dot with a picture of the author and a book we had from our collection.  Many students were inspired to read a celebri-dot book or two as they made their way in and out of the library.  We also had loads of fun adding our own creative marks to our giant dot display and learning about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama better known as the Princess of Polka Dots.  Check out the clip below to see a bit more about her work. 

And finally, we couldn't resist adding to the fun by decking ourselves out in dots to celebrating making our mark! What a great staff we have at NES!  We look forward to celebrating Dot Day next year with more students as we continue to MAKE - OUR - MARK!