R.E.S.P.E.C.T.!!!

Find out what it means to me!  I spent most of last Friday morning trying to prepare lessons for this week...and plan for a sub for tomorrow!  Sometimes it is so hard to verbalize the thoughts that are floating around in my brain and to make them comprehensible for a sub!  I was struggling between wanting to move my 6th graders on to the next topic but at the same time, wanting to be the one laying the groundwork for it...not someone else.  So to compromise...they will do a review of our topic, "Respect", but they will be able to utilize their iPads in a scavenger hunt sort-of-way!

There is a wonderful site where you can create your own QR codes, print them out and have the kiddos use their iPads/iPods to scan the QR and viola!, they are directed to the website you desire.  So in the spare time that I had to find, I located a few websites with relevant information regarding respect, created QR codes for them, glued them to note cards and hopefully (if all goes as smoothly as my brain thought it through) the kids will scan them tomorrow and answer some questions for me.  There are 3 codes that they will have to scan in order to answer all the questions and they are given the choice to work in groups or by themselves...so....crossing my fingers and hoping this all works!!!!

*Even with carefully planning in hopes that my sub would be able to enjoy this lesson...technology worked against me.  Thankfully I was still in the building this day and my kiddos were able to rescue retrieve me from my meeting so I could improvise the lesson.  I neglected to remember that the students' iPads are on a more restricted internet network than I am, and even though I was able to pull up all the sites using the QR reader, the kiddos were not able to.  Using some panicked-quick thinking, I pulled up the first QR reader on the teacher computer and let the kiddos watch the short video on the big screen (aka...SmartBoard).  We then discussed some points from it and the kiddos completed questions 1, 2, 5 & 6 from the RESPECT questionnaire.  After that, they broke into groups of their choice, scanned the third QR code and completed question 7 from the questionnaire.  They loved that they were able to use their iPads to create a bumper sticker, write a rap song, snap pictures of respect and even create a mini-video on respect.  I'm not joking when I say that ALL of my kiddos were engaged in this activity!  Even with technology giving me a mini-panic attack...it all worked out and my kiddos had a blast!