5th Grade QR Code Scavenger Hunt

Happy Tuesday and snow day for lots of my blogging friends! I hope you kept warm as temperatures across most of the country were below zero! I was rather productive today and had an awesome free day! Against all rules I am posting a SECOND blog today. 

I spent most of the afternoon working on a 5th Grade integrated QR Code lesson (math and social studies)! I used QRStuff to make the QR Codes, Google Map Distance Calculator to find the distance between the places and a site for conversions, call it cheating or time saving! Click each image to be taken to the website :)!

Here is the finished QR Code Scavenger Hunt which I will print and display around my room!
  

                   

Here is the recording page that students will use as they work through the scavenger hunt. 

If you are interested in doing this activity with your students leave a comment and email and I will happily share the original files! You can always adapt and make changes so it will work for YOUR students :)! 

5th Grade Technology Centers

Technology centers have really taken off with the 5th graders! Now that we are in our fourth rotation of centers the students know the routine and the room runs itself which is something that I love to see happen. Students are so engaged during these centers that you can hear a pin drop in the room and transitions are seamless. The social studies curriculum of US regions is an awesome springboard for our centers. Each center was introduced as a whole class lesson before we completed it in the center rotation. 

Center #1 QR Codes/Google Earth

We began the year introducing the QR Code Landmark/Google Earth scavenger hunt! Each region has important landmarks that they are responsible for learning and they have so much fun doing this activity. Rather than memorizing landmarks and cities this allows them to use different smarts and actually see a picture of the landmark (picture smart), visit the landmark on Google Earth (body smart) and refer to the curriculum (word smart). This is a great review of absolute (latitude and longitude) and relative location. Below you can see one side of the Southeast Region. 

Center #2 Clicker Quiz 

First I created the Clicker Quiz based on the curriculum but then it hit me that the students should do it so now they use Google Drive to access a class document on one screen and the 5th grade social studies curriculum on another screen to create questions with a buddy! This not only cut my work in half but also gave the students ownership of their test. They were really excited to see each others questions and the document that they created was used as a study guide although not all of the questions were on the quiz what a great way to review!

Center # 3 iPad - Discovery Education US Geography App

This app is not free but it has been worth every penny! Students plug in their ear buds and can watch several short video clips about a particular region while answering questions!

Center #4 QR Code Creation

Students created QR Codes for a huge map ( from the Dollar Tree that they colored) which is now hanging in the hallway and makes an awesome year-long bulletin board! Since this was their first QR Code we kept it simple with text. Each student selected a state and created a QR Code with the state, capital, abbreviation and region. A parent volunteer put the map together and attached all 50 QR Codes! We will continue to make QR Codes for the map and add pictures, videos and eventually podcasts or commercials for each state, etc. ! Since the states are a little smaller than I thought when I had the brilliant idea of adding different QR Codes throughout the year we decided to center the map on a bulletin board and then add strings (like with the postcard project) for additional QR Codes!

The 5th graders were so excited to see this hanging in the hall it actually caused a bit of a traffic jam in the hallway as they stopped to check out each state and see if their QR Code made it to the map (78 students and only 50 states).  As other grade levels are working on geography I am hoping that they will be able to use our map and scan the QR Codes to learn more about each state!

Technology Centers

Technology centers seem to be one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever had although I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this ingenious idea! 2nd and 5th grade seem to be my rockstar grade levels with consistency and awesome collaboration taking place!

2nd graders worked on weather centers last week and teachers walked away with FOUR science grades which as a former classroom teacher is awesome!

Center #1- Students worked in pairs to scan QR Codes with new academic vocabulary words and seasonal pictures. For 3 questions had to determine the word, 3 questions what a plant or animal was doing in the picture (hibernation, migration, dormancy) and 3 questions were identifying the season based on a picture of a tree.

Center #2 - Students went to PebbleGo and researched Extreme Weather (Blizzard, Hurricanes, Drought, Thunder and Lightning, Tornados) and record 8-10 key words. Then they created word clouds using ABCYa. Here is one example!

Center #3- Students accessed 4 graphs on the iPad in Adobe Reader (created in Word and saved as PDF) and answered 10 questions on Google Forms! If you have not used Google Forms yet they are amazing and you don't have to grade a stack of papers which is a huge bonus! The ONLY complaint I have after using them with 2nd graders is that if they bump the back button or refresh the page they loose all of their answers and have to start over. This was our first time using Google Forms in 2nd grade and it worked so great besides that little glitch and a few friends had to redo their forms! Although this was a science grade center it could also be taken as a math grade getting us up to 5 grades!

Center #4- Students watched a Brainpop video about Climate and then completed this Clicker Quiz. They love watching Brainpop videos but most of the quiz was interpreting weather maps which also integrated social studies and math. Since this could be considered a social studies map interpretation this could get us up to 6 grades! WOW- two one hour sessions and six grades which students were highly engaged! Gotta love it!

Have you tried technology centers? Share your experience! New to technology centers? I suggest starting small at first just like you would when introducing literacy centers! Introduce one center and complete it as a whole class, move on to introduce a second the same way and then do two centers, etc. We have gotten up to four centers and it is really working perfectly!

5th Grade State Research

North American Geography is the 5th grade social studies curriculum in our county so they spend the entire year using maps and learning everything there is to know about the regions of the US including the states and capitals, historic events, landmarks, climate, geographic features, physical features, natural resources, etc.

In place of their grade level program they host a Wax Museum where each student does extensive research on a particular state. Then they develop a science board for their state, dress up like a famous figure of that state and write and memorize a speech. Last year they created podcasts (reading their speeches) and linked those to QR Codes. This year I hope to up the anit with the technology integration and have come up with a few ideas!

I just found Weebly and I love how user-friendly it is (I hope it isn't blocked at school)! I played around with a few other web design sites that were difficult to navigate and I got really frustrated so I knew they would be useless with students but Weebly is awesome! Check out the example site I created! If you are interested in a tutorial just let me know I would be happy to provide one in a future blog post!

VA State Example

If you haven't checked out Lino yet you can read my earlier post, it is a free Web 2.0 tool that is like a big pin board. You can post stickies, photos, links, documents and even videos. It is similar to Glogster but I find it much easier to use. I thought that it would be a different and more interactive way to show off the state!

Linoit Virginia Example

The last thing I want to do I saw an example of on SchoolTube but cannot seem to find it at the moment is have students create a commercial for their state using iMovie or maybe PhotoBooth! We will be getting 30 MacBook Airs in the next few weeks and I thought this would be a great intro project. Although I have a MacBook Air I need to learn more and what better way than to JUMP IN and get started on a project.