Using QR Codes in 1st Grade

Hello all!  I know that it has been a really long time since I have posted anything.  It has been a LONG school year and I've had many changes in my personal life.  Now that I am not treading water just to stay afloat, I have time to post :) 

Last year, I talked about all of the ways I wanted to use QR Codes in my first grade classroom.  I found time to do many of those things and would love to share some examples here.

My teammate and I worked together last year to record and create QR Codes for all 100 of the Dolch Sight Words.  We printed these and then backed them on a bigger piece of tag board.  We wrote the sight word, bigger, on the top of the card, and put the QR Code on the bottom, then laminated them.  We posted these around our rooms as a choice during student ILAs (Independent Learning Activities).  They would use a fun pointer to read around the room.  They would then use an iPod to scan the code to check to see if the word they said was correct.  The codes ended up being a self-monitoring tool.  We previously tried to have them scan a code and read whatever word popped up but the size of the font was really child-unfriendly.  This was our way around that :)  Please click here to download the first 25 sight words or click on the picture.  I wish I had a picture of what the finished product looked like but we are locked out of our building for summer construction. 

I also used QR Codes to redo my listening center.  When I started teaching, I inherited a wealth of books on tapes.  This was great...until I realized that there were no working tape players left in the building.  I never got rid of the books/tapes because I always felt that there had to be something I could do.  What a shame it would have been to throw away such great resources! 

Over the summer, I happened to find a tape player at a garage sale for really cheap and I bought it.  I spent HOURS playing the tapes on the tape player and recording them using Garageband onto my computer.  The sound wasn't phenomenal, but it worked well enough for what I needed.  I then made all of these recordings into QR Codes.  I printed out these codes and taped them onto the backs of each book.  The kids then used 1 iPod with a headphone splitter as their Listening Center.  They would each get a book and one child would scan the code with the iPod.  They were able to listen to the story while following along in the book.  Here is an example of a code that I taped onto the book Rhythm.  Please feel free to scan it and check it out!

We also used QR Codes with many of our projects.  Individually, or with our buddies class, the kids created many projects with an accompanying QR Code.  I wish I had a picture of a finished project with the QR Code on it, but I didn't think about it until I had already sent the projects home.  One example was the descriptive writing we did on pumpkins.  The kids started by painting a pumpkin picture.  Then they wrote a minimum of 3 sentences describing their picture. Afterwards, they practiced reading it multiple times.  When they were ready, they recorded their voice reading their writing with the tech teacher.  This was a huge help because trying to have a kid record with 23 other kids in the room can be interesting!  :)  To finish their project, their recording was turned into a QR Code and was posted with their pumpkin picture in the hallway.  Students in other classrooms, parents, and even teachers stopped with their iPods, iPads, or smart phones to scan the codes and listen to the descriptions of each picture.  It was fun to see everyone interacting with the students' work!

I hope that this gives you some ideas on how to use QR Codes in your classroom.  They have become really easy to make now that I have used them, like, a gazillion times and the kids really like getting to use the iPods/iPads to scan them.  :)  Happy Creating!