Reading Buddies and QR Codes

If you really want to see your kids be leaders and get excited, partner them with some younger children. We had the best time today reading with our 2nd grade friends. Two weeks ago, my kiddos worked to create QR codes to go along with the biography about George Washington Carver in the 2nd grade readers.  We put all our work in this Google Doc:

 

Then, I reformatted it to make it easier to print onto one page. The kiddos cut out the codes and taped them to the agreed-upon pages in the books. Then we borrowed as many iPads and iPhones as we could get our hands on and headed down to 2nd grade!

My class was so excited, and I was really impressed with them. They took charge of their groups, and worked well with the younger children. I heard them saying things like:

"Who would like to read first? Okay, you can start on this page..."

"Here's how you scan a QR code. You want to try it?"

"See this picture...?" 

"Good job reading that!"

"Let's focus on our story."

"Did you know...?"

And you know how you always wonder to yourself if your class really remembers what you're teaching? Well, I'm here to tell you, mine did! I was amazed to hear snippets from my kiddos that they'd learned in Alabama History as they explained things to the younger children. Segregation, Tuskegee University, boll weevils destroying the cotton crop, etc...It was so exciting to hear them explain these concepts! 

Probably the best moments of all for me were seeing my kids so engaged in literacy learning/teaching, and the comments they made when we came back to the classroom. 

"I love how they all looked up to us like we were the adults!"

"All the kids in my group were so interested in what we were doing!"

"My group took turns really well."

"Can we do this for the other 2nd grade?"

This was a fabulous learning activity that we'll be doing it again for the other second grade classroom very soon. 

Contractions and QR Codes (Freebie)

I had such a great time creating my first QR code activity, that I've made two more and decided to share one with my bloggy buddies! This one is a monster themed contraction practice activity in which students write contractions from two given words. To check themselves, they scan the QR code.

Click here for the Freebie!

I hope you and your students enjoy these! 

My First Crack at QR Codes

I've finally done it! One of my goals this school year is to integrate more technology into my math instruction, and I think I made a small step today. This morning I woke up and said to myself, "I want to create something that has to do with QR codes and renaming fractions in lowest terms. Here's the result:

Use your device to try out one of the codes!

The idea is that students rename each fraction using lowest terms, then scan the QR code to check their answers. If you're interested, you can check it out in my TN store.

So, how did I do it? It was so simple! First I designed my task cards and added everything except for the QR codes. Then I used two tools:

To make the code:
QR Stuff is a free, simple site to use for making codes. Since I started small, I decided to use my QR codes to give a text answer. On the site, simply choose the button beside 'plain text' and type the text that you want to appear in the content box. The QR code is generated automatically. You can change the color if you'd like or leave it black and white. Download it and insert it as an image.

To scan the code:

i-nigma is my favorite QR code scanner. It's free, and super fast. You can download it on your Apple device here, or from the Google Play store here. This is a screen shot of me using it just now. Sorry its a little tilted.  I literally had to snap it in less than a second because it read the code so quickly!

And that is it! I can't wait to try this game out on the kiddos in January. It will be my first use of QR codes in my fourth grade class. Hopefully, this has given you some ideas for getting started with QR codes as well. I'd love to hear your ideas for getting started, or how you're already using QR codes. 

You can also see this post on Technology Tailgate:

AETC 2012: My Smack Down List

Well, if you follow me on twitter, you know that I've been at AETC the past two days. What a great conference! Aside from meeting with great friends and colleagues and presenting a session, I took away some great ideas I hope to implement in my classroom. Here's my AETC Smackdown:

• Twitter Book Reports: Students create book teasers. They can even post a link to the book or a picture of the book. (From my friend, Julie D. Ramsay). My classroom has a twitter account and the students tweet what we're learning each day. We'd love to connect with your class on twitter! We're @kilgosnews. 
• Innovation Day: For one day students choose what to learn, and how to learn it. They work all day on their self-selected topic and create a presentation they use to teach the class. (Also from Julie).
• VoiceThread: I knew about this free webtool, but haven't put it to use yet. I plan to this year. (from Julie)
• Use Google Forms for creating rubrics. (From my friend, Amanda C. Dykes)

My biggest take-away had to do with using QR codes in the classroom. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but just needed to know a little more about it.

The Daring Librarian has tons of great ideas and tips for using QR codes. You just HAVE to check it out if you're curious about them.

i-nigma is a fabulous multi-platform app for reading QR codes. It scans quickly and saves your scans in your history.

QR Stuff is a great site for making codes for anything: videos, websites, text, etc...And for all of you color-coding OCD people out there (me) you can create QR Codes in color!

I'm really still trying to process all of the fabulous information! Do you use any of the tools I mentioned? If so, I'd love to know what you do. Maybe our classes could even collaborate on something together. Please share.