Audio Poetry Gallery & QR Code Countdown to Summer!

Happy Saturday!  Linking up with Head Over Heels for Teaching for Spark Student Motivation Saturday...

Audio Poetry Gallery

My kids love anything that has to do with scanning QR Codes, and they REALLY got into poetry this year.  Back in April, we were working on reading poetry with fluency according to punctuation and organization and with expression appropriate to the poem's content.  We also used our school's iPads to record our readings.  Their readings were fabulous, and I was trying to come up with a creative way they could share them beyond just our classroom.  The Audio Poetry Gallery was born!  Students self-selected poems of interest, practiced reading multiple times with and without a partner, and recorded their poems using a free iPad app.  Students also created illustrations to accompany their poems, showing the picture they saw in their minds when reading the poem.  Feel free to download the student guide sheets here!

Some logistics for the teacher: I had my students email their recording files to me, and I saved them to my Google Drive.  Then I created a link to share their audio in Google Drive, copied and pasted each link into QR Code Generator, and saved each code to a folder.  Finally, I inserted each code into a Publisher document (can do in this in any word processing program), sized to fit the gallery sheet, and printed the codes for the kids to cut out and glue on their gallery sheets.

The best part was the sharing!  All of the classes in our building were invited to come and listen in our gallery.  My second graders buddied up with kindergarteners to assist them, and the rest of the classes were free to visit any time they like.  They just needed to bring iPads and headphones!

Forgot to mention the standards addressed with this project, if you were wondering: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.5 and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.10. 

Countdown to Summer with QR Codes!

Courtney saw a great idea online--using QR codes for a countdown to summer.  Since we have a Muppet them, I created character countdown cards with QR codes.  Courtney created bees and hives to go along with their classroom bee theme.  The kids are super-charged about scanning a code each day! Only two codes left to scan...

Here are some of the incentives Courtney and I included: root beer floats, no shoes in the classroom, listen to music while we work, extra recess, hat day, Storyline Online, make a key chain/bag pull, make a snack recipe (tripling recipe--great math connection), scratch art, reading outside, bring a game to play day, watching a movie and popcorn (last day), etc.

Check out other great ideas to Spark Student Motivation at Head Over Heels for Teaching!

Have a superb end to your year!