Tried and True

Today I am linking up with The Teaching Tribune  for a fun linky full of tried and true ideas to use in your classroom.

This idea is not necessarily tried and true as I have only used it once but it worked so well I am going to use it a whole lot more!

I decided to double up on science and and literacy (yeah cross curricular!)  for this fun research unit.  We were studying weather related hazards in science and informational writing in literacy so we combined the two into a short research project.  The kiddos worked in small groups on weather hazards they were interested in studying.  I checked out several books from the school and local libraries about each hazard and then went on a web search.  Internet resources are a huge part of student's lives but I get REALLY nervous about 8-9 year olds being on the internet and finding something inappropriate!  In came QR codes!  I had never used them before this but they were AWESOME!  The kids loved them and were totally engaged the whole time!  They took great notes from the information they found and were able to turn out fabulous research papers about their hazard.

In order for the kids to use the QR codes I put them on some cute cards, cut them out and laminated them for future use.  I loved that I could control where the kids were going and supplement the research they were doing by finding sites that would fill in any information they could not find in their books.

I think I may have fallen in love with QR codes.  I will certainly be using them more this coming year!

Nicole