Monthly Archives: September 2016

Each year I have the students “Make Their Mark.” We read the book THE DOT by Peter H. Reynolds. The book encourages readers to “make your mark and see where it takes you.”

About This Book – http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/dot#cart/cleanup

“With a simple, witty story and free-spirited illustrations, Peter H. Reynolds entices even the stubbornly uncreative among us to make a mark — and follow where it takes us.

Her teacher smiled. “Just make a mark and see where it takes you.” Art class is over, but Vashti is sitting glued to her chair in front of a blank piece of paper. The words of her teacher are a gentle invitation to express herself. But Vashti can’t draw; she’s no artist. To prove her point, Vashti jabs at a blank sheet of paper to make an unremarkable and angry mark. “There!” she says. That one little dot marks the beginning of Vashti’s journey of surprise and self-discovery. That special moment is the core of Peter H. Reynolds’s delicate fable about the creative spirit in all of us”

We tie in Science by having students learn about paper chromotography and then see what happens when they make their mark on a filter with markers. See how my students made their mark.

This is my classroom before my Innovative Spaces Make Over.