International Dot Day is celebrated on September 15th of each year.

International Dot Day was started on September 15, 2009 when a teacher, Terry Shay, introduced his class to Peter H. Reynolds The Dot.  The purpose of the book is to inspire creativity, courage, and collaboration.  In  the book, a teacher encourages a student who does not believe in  themselves to “make their mark.”  The student starts with a dot that leads to a breakthrough in her courage and self-worth.

Throughout this week,  Mr. Burns and our students have been working on Dot Day projects.  Our kindergarten and first grade students used paper plates to express themselves using markers, crayons, and paper.  2nd and 3rd graders used construction paper to create something to represent them.  Mr. Burns provided the students a variety of circular items, i.e. cds, paper towel rolls, and coins, to create dots on their papers.  Some students wrote a short summary about their drawings and what it meant to them.  Our 4th and 5th grade students used construction paper and glued  a black dot to the paper.  Then, they created works for art using the black dot for inspiration.  Look for the students art work to be on display during Open House this week.

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For those of you who missed the Peardeck training on Tuesday, you missed a laughter-filled afternoon.  We had a blast working on an interactive Peardeck in both teacher and student paced modes.  Those teachers in attendance showed their skills on slides about math,  RLA, science, and social studies.  Look at a few of the slides below.

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On the teacher side, you can look at the responses as a whole group or individual.  For example, on a draggable slide, you can have the student responses layered and immediately see if all students understand the material or if you need to review.  One of my favorite things about Peardeck is that you can view individual responses and choose to share one or a few on the projector.   The best part is the student will remain anonymous when you do this.  This allows your shy students to still shine in the classroom.

A few Peardeck highlights (just my opinion):

• I love the takeaways.  How awesome is it that students can view their responses and the teacher’s notes on their own time?
• You do not recreate the wheel.  Peardeck allows you to add interactive slides to existing Google Slides presentations.
• Peardeck has many interactive types – draggable, open-ended, multiple choice, and websites – just to name a few.
• You can toggle between teacher-led and student-paced during all presentations.  This allows the teacher to check for understanding and bring the class back together to clarify misconceptions.

The best part, our campus has access to all of Peardeck’s features through December.  This includes all interactive features and their massive template gallery.  On Thursday, they added a gallery for Social Studies and more templates are to be released in the coming weeks.  Get with me if you need additional help or support  with Peardeck.