FableVision Learning Spotlight Blog
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Classroom Spotlight: Dammam, Saudi Arabia Makes its Mark on Dot Day
This blog post was written by Patrick McDonagh, FableVision Learning marketing intern.
On Sept. 16, Nouf Arar Aldossary a 7th and 8th grade math teacher in Dammam, Saudi Arabia celebrated International Dot Day. For Nouf, it was a special celebration.
“Dot Day 2017 is a special day for me for two reasons” Nouf said. “First: It is the first Dot Day I celebrated. Second: It is the last days for me in The Sixteenth Intermediate School in Dammam. I will be moving to teach in a small village for primary school - a new community, a new school level, a new life!”
The school joined over 10 million dot makers in 170 countries for International Dot Day, a truly global celebration of creativity and courage. To learn more about Dot Day, celebrated every Sept. 15-ish, click here.
We were excited to connect the dots with Nouf to learn more about the school’s first Dot Day celebration. Read on!
How did you bring the Dot Day experience to the classroom?
I gave 7th graders worksheets with a circle divided to 4 sectors, and told them to make their mark - just begin with dot and see where will take you.
For 8th graders, I gave them a large amount of colorful magnetic circles (400 pieces), and asked them to design a creative artwork on the whiteboard.
Then, students asked me to continue to celebrate Dot Day on the next Sunday Sept. 24; to celebrate the national day of Saudi Arabia (it was on Friday 23 September 2017). They put a black magnetic circle on the whiteboard, then put the green magnetic circles surrounded by white circles, and put colorful magnetic circles around it. They mean that Mecca (black circle) is the heart of Saudi Arabia (white and green circles), and Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds (colorful circles), the investment powerhouse, and the hub connecting three continents, which align with 2030 vision. We spent another 3 hours to complete the creative art work. The students and I are so proud of our work!
How did you use Dot Day themes in your mathematics teaching?
When I introduced Dot Day to students, I first asked the students: “In mathematics, what does a dot mean? Is it an important concept?”
They said that a dot is so important in mathematics because everything consists of a dot. A straight line can be drawn between any two dots ( Euclid's elements).
Then I asked them: “what about life? is the dot an important symbol in our life?” they said that the dot refers to the beginning of everything, the beginning of success, the beginning of creativity, the beginning of our journey into life.
Who or what inspires you to make your mark every day?
Because a dot of blood saves a human, a dot of water quenches thirst, and a dot on the letter gives meaning to the word; so the dot deserves to be celebrated. It inspired me and inspired my students to make our mark in our community. In future, I will do another Dot Day with students in grade 1 and grade 3 in the new school to inspire me to a new happy life.
How did you Make Your Mark on Dot Day?
We love seeing all the Dot activity on social media! Continue to share your #DotDay celebration with by using the #DotDay and #MakeYourMark.
If you would like to be featured on our blog, send us a message: info@fablevisionlearning.com
13 Days and 13 Ways to Celebrate Dot Day
Join million students, teachers, and librarians this International Dot Day, celebrating creativity and courage in 186 countries on or around September 15th-ish! To support your International Dot Day festivities, we assembled this handy list of 15 ways in 15 days to celebrate Dot Day.
1) Discover The Dot
Read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds to see where all of this started - you can grab a copy over at The Dot Central.
2) Register Your Class
Join the growing community celebrating International Dot Day by registering over at The Dot Club! You can also download our FREE Educator’s Handbook for Dot Day, which features student handouts by Peter H. Reynolds and Dot Day activities by creative educators.
3) Get Inspired by the First Dot Day Class
Learn what Dot Day means to the students of the first class to ever participate in Dot Day, straight from the students themselves. In this video, seniors from Traer, Iowa, who first celebrated Dot Day as fourth graders in 2009, reflect on the history and growth of this creativity movement.
4) Check Out Celebri-dots
Head over to the Celebri-dots website to check out dots created by a variety of individuals, from authors and illustrators to actors and astronauts! Packed with dots from all walks of life - paint dots, pie dots, and even Earth dots - you’ll be sure to find inspiration there.
5) Dot Day Song
Listen, sing, and move to "The Dot Song" with kidlit singer/songwriter Emily Arrow!
6) Gear Up
Stock up on official International Dot Day gear by visiting The Dot Central for materials such as an autographed copy of The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, sticker packs, t-shirts, and posters! If you want even more Dot Day gear, you can also download free multi-language Dot Day posters.
7) Poke Around Pinterest
Still don’t have enough dots in your day for Dot Day? Visit our International Dot Day Pinterest board to see how others celebrate Dot Day with activities, resources, and more!
8) Download Quiver
Quiver brings your 2D art to life through 3D augmented reality so you can interact with your Dot Day artwork in exciting new ways! Download the free Quiver - 3D Coloring App and print out this template to get started.
9) Connect the Dots with Other Teachers
Looking to "connect the dots" with other classrooms nationally and internationally on Dot Day? Whether it's through email or web-based video connection, use the Dot Day Google Doc to make connections. Thanks to creative librarian/educators Shannon McClintock Miller @shannonmmiller, Andy Plemmons @plemmonsa, and Matthew Winner @matthewwinner for overseeing this effort!
10) Fabricate Your Dot
Fab@School Maker Studio is a perfect tool for cultivating your inventive spirit! With this paper prototyping and fabrication software, flex your design muscles and create 2D, Pop-up, and 3D paper models inspired by The Dot. It’s easy to get your design mind rolling when you start small - you can always try again and again! Try fabricating dots that fold, roll, spin, or transform!
11) Make Your Mark Move
With Animation-ish it’s never been easier to bring your drawings to life. Three distinct levels let you practice and animation motion techniques by making your dots roll, bounce, squish, grow, morph, and much more. What can your dots do? Just make your mark and see where it take you!
12) Find Your Ramon
Just like Vashti’s teacher encouraged her to “make her mark,” Vashti later used what she learned to encourage Ramon to make his own mark. Now’s your chance - go out and find your Ramon and encourage them to make their mark too!
13) Share Your Mark
Share your mark and connect with the International Dot Day community through social media! There are over 8 million individuals from 168 countries participating in International Dot Day, so make sure to share your mark with all of them across social media with #MakeYourMark and with the official Dot Club Twitter feed @DotClubConnect!
Teacher Spotlight: Anne Turner, Kindergarten Teacher at North Tama County Community School
Every day is a new adventure for Anne Turner. As a kindergarten teacher at North Tama County Community School in Traer, Iowa, she encourages hands-on, active participation in her classroom with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) at the center of her lessons.
“I love creating new things, whether it’s new STEM centers at school, books with my students, or crafts at home,” she says. “Every day is a new adventure!”
Her love for creating new things sparked an innovative nature that she uses while teaching her kindergartens. Whether it’s producing books, developing STEM centers, or making arts and crafts, she says that hands-on, experiential learning is the way to go.
For the Teacher Spotlight, Anne, a FableVision Learning Ambassador, recently shared her favorite things about being a teacher, how she applies Stationery Studio in the classroom, and how she and her students had a blast on International Dot Day 2016!
Tell us about your classroom; what is a typical day like?
My kindergarten classroom is full of fun! A typical day starts with morning meetings and welcomes. We then get the opportunity to explore different STEM centers. We do many book read-alouds throughout the whole day and this will start a new learning adventure! We focus on literacy and math throughout the day as well, connecting everything together and creating hands on fun… In the afternoons, we focus on Daily 5 and guided reading centers that encourage our independence as young readers and writers!
Daily 5 are centers we rotate through that help us learn on a more individualized level. Each child rotates through guided reading (individual work with Mrs. Turner), read to self or to someone else, listen to reading, work on words, and work on writing. These centers can include activities from our STEM investigation, or working on our leveled readers and things we struggle with. The kids go at their own pace and include their own interests!
What is a STEM center?
These centers are a great way to connect everything you learn in school together and spiral kids’ learning. We don’t have just science or reading time anymore. Let’s say we are meeting the standard ‘analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.’ We would, in our STEM investigation, build ramps and use different types of balls to conduct tests. We would also meet our reading standards by looking at different types of texts to support this and by dictating opinion pieces based off of the pictures we take of each others ramps. They become pretty big writing projects. So, STEM, to us in our room, is mixing all of our learning together to truly understand!
I hear you have some snazzy uses for Stationery Studio, can you share a few?
We use Stationery Studio almost daily! I use the software to create different styles of writing pages to encourage the kids to write and help them get new ideas. I also insert images that connect to a book we've read to help use continue to write about our findings. It is greatly beneficial to my students because they have writing lines (head line, belt line, and foot line) that help guide them to write legibly. With the fun pictures and borders, they are much more encouraged to write. When the kids take a picture of their creation or investigation, and we print it and glue it on the Stationery Studio paper, they feel great ownership!
Dot Day 2016 was huge at your school this year, can you share how your students got ready for the day?
My students love International Dot Day! This celebration is new to them and we may have read The Dot about 20 times! Our students started learning about how special they are and how we are all unique. We brought in families to see how each family dynamic is unique. We also learned about mixing paint colors to make our own dot and tried to cut out a circle. We had fun decorating dots to fill our halls! As a whole elementary school, each student got to decorate coffee filters and hang them in our hallways to fill the windows. It was so beautiful! Our class also explored all of Peter H. Reynolds’ books, one being The Water Princess. We helped raise $50 for Ryan’s Well as we found it shocking that people in our world struggled for water every day.
What was your favorite 2016 International Dot Day moment?
My favorite International Dot Day moment this year was getting Peter H. Reynolds into our classroom to talk to my students. Their faces were glowing! We talked about typical “kindergarten” things, like frogs and other random things. Mr. Reynolds drew us a new idea for a book called “Toad the Artist” because the students got stuck on talking about frogs and toads. We are currently working on creating this book! Peter H. Reynolds inspired a lot of people that day at North Tama.
What has been your favorite moment as a teacher?
My favorite moment as a teacher is working with the kids. I love our Daily 5 centers because I get time to work with the kids on learning individual skills, making books, and writing letters that the kids want to create. We have also extended chapter books and had lots of fun together doing that!
You are new to the league of FableVision Ambassadors. What are you looking forward to?
I am always looking to learn! I am anxious to explore everything and to use what I learn with my kindergarten students. Always up for new things!
Are YOU – or someone you know - activating any of FableVision’s books, media, and/or software to approach learning in more creative, engaging ways? If you'd like to nominate someone for the FableVision Creative Educator Spotlight, click here and complete your submission electronically.