Hello, my name is Mr. Stick, and in 2005 I was featured in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Writing Across the Curriculum Guide. I was introduced in that NNWP publication as a classroom "Margin Mascot," and teachers who own that guide learned specific strategies for having students re-visit and respond to their class notes and journal entries. The Writing Across the Curriculum Guide will no longer be available for purchase in 2009, so information about me is being collected and placed on this page at the WritingFix website. In addition to information about me, this page will house other innovative ideas from teachers on how to engage students in note-taking.

I am easy to draw in the margins of a notebook. I am easy to give facial expressions to (see the cool handout below). I am easy to give dialogue bubbles to so that I can show you what I am thinking about. I am not exactly a cartoon character, but the students come to think of me as one. Each student learns to give me a voice, and that voice explains how they are connecting to or thinking about classroom notes and responses. A minute, an hour, a day, or a week after taking notes, have students draw me in the margins and then give me something smart to say about the information they have taken their notes on. Once students have drawn and given me something to say, have them move around the classroom and share their "Mr. Stick" entries with each other. You'll be surprised at the conversations your students will start having about the content you are teaching them.

In Northern Nevada, I am used in many classrooms that focus on different content areas. I have taken on different names (Mr. Fraction, The Mad Scientist, Seňor Stick, Mr. Democracy, etc.) and I have become a device used in places other than notebooks (journals, illustrated essays, story boards, etc.).

The ultimate goal of a classroom "Margin Mascot" and every other tool shared on this page is to engage students in thinking about the notes they are taking for class. Note-taking is an important way to gather information, but let's face it, it can be a tedious act that can produce notes students don't care very much about. This page at WritingFix celebrates ways to make notes both personal and useful to your students.

Enjoy this page of free-to-use resources and classroom ideas. If you would like to join the WritingFix community and share an idea on note taking from your classroom, please contact us at webmaster@writingfix.com.

Resources for Establishing a Classroom Note-taking Margin Mascot (These 5 documents were originally created for the NNWP's Writing Across the Curriculum Guide)	Margin Mascots Living Outside the Margins: Tools and Student Examples (These resources were originally featured in the NNWP's Writing Across the Curriculum Guide)
Corbett Harrison's 7-page introduction to establishing a classroom note-taking mascot. This document is compiled from the pages of the Writing Across the Curriculum Guide. 2-page "How to Draw a Mr. Stick" instructions for the overhead or document cam. Teach your students to create a "Mr. Stick" early on in the school year, practice a few times, then require his presence in notebooks and journals. Powerpoint slide show that shows "How to Draw a Mr. Stick." This is the original PowerPoint that Corbett Harrison actually used to teach his students the right way to draw a margin mascot. Mr. Stick Emotional Faces Handout. Xerox a copy of this one-pager for every student and have them keep it in their notebooks or journals. Require students to attach an emotion to their Mr. Stick drawings, and a whole new element will be added to your "Mr. Stick Assignments." Mr. Stick's Blooms Cube. A tool for differentiated instruction, this cube can be used to randomly or purposely assign different tasks for students' Mr. Stick drawings to accomplish.	The Mr. Stick Haiku Comic Strip. A haiku poem has three lines: its first line has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, the third has five syllables. A haiku comic strip has three boxes: the first box is narrated with five syllables, the second has seven, the third has five. Can your students summarize a learned concept with brevity and accuracy? The Radicals of Life: A Mr. Stick Soap Opera Story board. To build deeper understanding of a newly-learned concept, suggest to students that there should be a soap opera that requires knowledge of the concept to understand the soap opera's plot. Ask students to make a story board of one of the scenes from this fictitious soap opera. The story board must show knowledge of newly learned facts. Mr. Perpendicular and Ms. Parallel: Original Mr. Stick Derivatives. Challenge students to create original versions of Mr. Stick that go along with newly learned concepts. Students can devote a page of their notebooks or journals to explain their original Mr. Stick creations. Mr. Stick Sketch-and-Write Vocabulary Exploration. Explore and explain new vocabulary words by creating Mr. Stick-like drawings that help explain the words' meanings.