Today, and continuing tomorrow, I created a lesson to review literary terms. Some of the suggestions from my CT's were to create a Jeopardy game or some kind of matching game to get the students to enjoy the review. Now, for me, I've done the Jeopardy thing, I've done matching, and I wanted to take the opportunity to try something new; luckily my CT is VERY open to my experimental teaching =)! One of the greatest things about this program is the ideas my fellow classmates have come up with and shown me and when it came time to create this review game I knew I was going to steal and idea from our tech savvy computer support man, William. During the ITU walkthrough, William showed us how to create QR codes that can link to just about anything and it is this exciting form of new technology that I used.
I created a matching game, but instead of using papers printed with just the definitions and words, I created the matching partner in the pair using a QR code. If you haven't seen a QR code, it is a new form of barcode that, when scanned with a barcode scanner you can download for free on a tablet or smart phone, links you to a specific item of your choice as the code creator (see picture below). To be honest, at first when the game started it was a bit complex and confusing. The school I am teaching at, Great Oak High School, is apparently a cell phone blocking fortress, i.e. the classrooms are all brick and thus, no service, so reflecting back, I should have had the students download the scanners the night before. Oh, well, you live and you learn. Once the technological issue was solved by going outside to download the software the game was underway. I couldn't help but feeling like a proud mom when your kid does something amazing as I watched them work in teams to scan the codes and find the matching word of definition depending on what they pulled up. They thought it was so cool and had no idea that those "box codes" as they call them, could do something like that. It was also really exciting to see the teams different strategies to find matching definitions and corresponding words for definitions for 30 literary terms. Although I told them how the game worked I left the delegating and how they would split the work for them to decide. Each group had a different strategy and they all worked together so well. Again, in hindsight, I know I created a REALLY complex game and for differentiation purposes should have provided them some of the words/definitions in the graphic organizer I created because 30 definitions was quite the undertaking. We are finishing the game tomorrow and now, because of TPA 4, that I have the media permission slips, I will take pictures of the game in action. I have to say I was really excited about the game all in all, it shows how using technology in the classroom these days really gets kids excited and definitely enhances the learning. Finally, I am looking forward to tomorrow's game end because I also created a reflection page for the students and I am eager to hear their responses. Below I will provide a page of the graphic organizer I created (which needs a little more refining) and the questions as well as a picture of 1 of the 3 sets of games I created. Oh, yeah, that's the other part I forgot to mention, if you plan on doing something like this, organization is KEY! I created 9 sets of the game, 3 different versions, each set of the 9 had 30 QR CODES EACH. You do the math that's 270 QR codes to keep organized!!! For me, I did it one by one, cutting, pasting, and writing a number on the back of the code that I had a master key to, so I knew QR code 15 corresponded with the word onomatopoeia or QR code 30 corresponded with the definition of alliteration. It was a long and VERY tedious process, but all worth it in the end =)!
No comments:
Post a Comment