Making Your Mark...One Dot at a Time

Make your Mark!!! See where it takes you. No matter how small. Sunday, September 15, 2013 is International Dot Day in honor of the tenth anniversary of The Dot
by Peter H. Reynolds (Candlewick, 2003).

This book started a paradigm shift when Terry Shay, a teacher in North Tama, declared International Dot Day and encouraged students to make their mark. The Dot was the first step leading to a trio of titles in the Creatrilogy that helps readers to remember to make their mark, enjoy the ish-fulness and think outside the box. In this Common Core-driven age, we need to remember that we have a responsibility to help students acquire the skills to make their mark but also have to create environments for students to make decisions about how they make their mark. There is a place for creativity in school, in life and in wonder.

So, here are a few ways for you to meet the Common Core Standards and have your students explore their potential.

• Write/draw/video/audiotape etc. about how they want to make their mark.
• Create your own dot in any media form and describe what you did.
• Locate dots in your life and write a statement about what the dot represents.
• See how many ways you can create a dot without making a dot.
• Read The Dot aloud and ask students to describe a time when they were scared of starting something new.
• View the Celebridots and have students read the books/research the creators.
• Describe a time in your life when someone encouraged you to be brave.
• Describe a time in your life when you wanted to be brave but needed encouragement.

There are so many ways to make your mark, no matter how small or grande. As a teacher and a mentor, I think that we need to focus our energies to JUST DO IT while remembering that I think I can.

Think about how you Make Your Mark as an I think I can teacher who models reading, writing, listening, speaking, thinking and creating.

Watty Piper may have started it but Peter H. Reynolds thought outside the box one mark at a time and now millions of people around the world know that they can make their mark.

Concrete Poems as a Model for Comprehension Responses

Here is an idea that I have shared over the years. When I first read techically, it's not my fault by John Grandits (Clarion, 2004), my brain began to spew ideas for how to use the concrete poems (a poem whose shape and typography enhance the ideas in the text) in the book as a stimulus for ideas for how students might demonstrate their comprehension. The companion volume, Blue Lipstick (Clarion, 2007) followed and the ideas grew.

In these short novels told through concrete poems, Grandits hits the target with the narrative and voice of each of the poems. Technically, it's not my fault tells the story about Robert and Blue Lipstick is his sister Jessie's story.  

Each of the concrete poems in these two volumes is a treasure by itself but when you use them as a potential model for how readers might respond to text or present information, they open up a whole new level of response opportunity. For example, in technically, it's not my fault, Robert has to write a thank you note for a sweater and Polka Dot Hall of Fame poster that his Aunt Hildegard sent him for his 11th birthday. The Thank-You Letter with its footnotes is just perfect. Almost everyone has received a gift that missed the mark and then had to write at letter expressing their gratitude but what they were really thinking was, "this is the worst, weirdest, ugliest gift that I have ever received." Here are a few suggestions to get your brain spinning. These are meant to be product suggestions for how a student might respond to another text that he or she is reading. 

Curriculum Muse:

• The Thank-You Letter (techically, it's not my fault)
• Write a thank you letter using footnotes that would permit sharing multiple perspectives.  
• Write a letter from one character to another in the footnoted thank you letter format.
• The Tower (techically, it's not my fault)
• After reading a fairytale, tell it from the perspective of a character who falls into the story
• A Chart of My Emotional Day (Blue Lipstick)
• On paper or using a spreadsheet, chart the emotional day, life, or another element of a character in a story.
• My Brother the Genius (Blue Lipstick)
• Create a phrenology image for a character, character's alter ego from a work of fiction.
• Create a phrenology image for a person about whom you have read a biography
• Grown Ups Talking: A+ (Blue Lipstick)
• Write a concrete poem in the shapes of people's heads as if you were in their heads/listening to them.

It's about Time

I have procrastinated long enough and need to make a commitment to writing or at least using my writing as a way to clarify my thoughts. I also need a place and space to share ideas with the people who would may want to find books to share with students, children, friends, and family. As a professor I also need a place to share ideas and strategies to motivate and support and engage readers of any age with texts.  So, welcome to my blog where I hope that you will enjoy my musings. I am also getting my act together to send tweets into the world on Twitter as sussingoutbooks.

The Beginning...One Word at a Time

I am finally getting around to establishing a usable blog for books friends and foes. The purpose of this blog is to create a destination for my book, teaching, and thinking related musings and ideas. I have to admit that the pressure to blog and tweet has been weighing on me but I need a place to share thoughts on books and strategies to ignite and delight readers for a lifetime of reading pleasures. The only premise for this blog is that is based on creating lifetime readers versus the schooltime readers that are so often the focus for what happens in schools today. I hope that this will become a place for cultivating delight in words, images, and ideas in all kinds of books.

So, all materials on this Blog are available for you to use as is, to tweak to meet your needs, or to use to percolate ideas for how to ignite and cultivate readers who engage with texts. So, if you use something that works, share alike or share your remix.