QR Codes Part 4: A Lesson Plan incorporating QR

Last spring I had a social group of 2nd-3rd graders that was getting a little tired.  I wasn't getting tired, but they were getting tired of me.  I needed to change things up, and had recently learned about QR Codes at Edcamp Boston, so I thought I would give it a try.

One concept we had been working on was smart guesses vs. wacky guesses (a form of social inferencing, see Michelle Garcia Winner's Think Social), and I wanted to break from structured tabletop conversation activities to let the kids engage with each other through play.  So my plan was to have a themed session, and have them find QR codes around the therapy center in order to guess the theme.  The theme was camping, with an interactive website ("Thrill of the Catch"), play activity, and board game as part of the agenda.

The QR portion went like this:
1. I created four QR Codes that linked to images (pictures of a forest, boat, campfire, and tent) that served as clues about the theme. I printed the QR Codes and hid them around the center.
2.  The kids worked together to find the hidden codes, negotiate and take turns scanning them, and we discussed each one, doing some "negative practice" of what a wacky guess would be (i.e. "I found a boat!  I think the activity will be about clowns!"). It should be noted that QR hunts are great for kids who need some movement as part of their sessions.
3. We finally came to a smart guess about the theme, and proceeded to the non-QR activities for the rest of the session.

You create a QR of an image the same way you create one for a URL, but the process is a little different.  Check it out below: