Activities
Technology is here to stay, and there is nowhere that’s truer than in classrooms from Pre-K through college. QR, or quick response, codes are one way to bring technology into your classroom and make learning more interactive and accessible. Students can use iPads or other school devices to give the QR codes a quick scan, bringing them to learning materials and activities that will enhance your classroom curriculum. There are numerous free online QR code generators to help you get started.
Here are a few fun and easy ways to use QR codes in your classroom.
1. Make learning stations
Place a few QR codes around your classroom that will take your students to short videos that reinforce concepts or websites that give further instruction and examples of what you’re teaching.
2. Provide extension activities
Teachers always have one or two students that tend to finish everything really fast and then get bored. Have a few QR codes that provide extension videos, activities, or challenges so those early-finishers can stay engaged while everyone else finishes.
3. Check answers
Create QR codes that link to the answer key for assignments. When used selectively, students can check their answers, see what they did wrong, and then correct their mistakes.
4. Link students to helpful videos
Have a few QR codes that connect to photographs of what you’re teaching so students can get a visual picture. You might include a picture of the brain when teaching about the human body or include photos of various historical landmarks when teaching important events in history.
5. Go on virtual field trips
Enable students to go on virtual field trips with just one scan! Now your students can have zoos, botanic gardens, famous places, and locations around the world literally at their fingertips.
6. Make book reviews
Add a few QR codes to your reading area to help students explore books they might be interested in reading. You might also use them to provide lists of books similar to the ones your students already love.
7. Streamline research
Create a file of information for your students to access and then make a QR code that links to all that information in one place. This saves the time of your students having to do research and directs them to the types of credible materials you want them to rely on.
8. Set up a digital gallery
Give parents and other loved ones a chance to see student work by making a digital gallery. Take photos of great examples of work, art projects, and other activities and make a slideshow others can access using a code.
9. Communicate with your students
Take a video of yourself explaining an important concept or, for younger kids, do a read aloud. Provide a QR code that takes students to the video.
10. Copy the museums
Many museums have little cards or displays that give important information about what you’re seeing. Copy that idea in your classroom and around your school. For example, you might hang up important landmarks in your state or town with QR codes that provide historical facts, or you could hang up photos of the teachers in your school with ones that link to interesting facts about them.
11. Create fact cards or invitations
If you have an important school event coming up, such as parent teacher conferences or a holiday concert, make a QR code that links to all the facts you need your families to know. You might also make one with all the information families need to be successful in your class. Send the QR code home with students so parents know exactly what’s coming and when.
12. Save paper
Instead of printing every single piece of paper you normally would, make QR codes that explain project expectations and deadlines, provide your syllabus, and more. You can also make them for your yearly school calendar and hot lunch menu, or give them to parents when they need all that important back-to-school information.
However you use QR codes in your classroom, your students will benefit. Start with the basics and some some fun with it!
