QR scavenger hunt

I read the excellent Keith Toda's version of this and was inspired to try my own. Essentially, you create QR codes with information and clues encoded in them, paste them up around the school, and empower the kids to use a QR reader or snapchat (which has one in its camera function!) to go on a scavenger hunt for the information.

I wanted them to do a review over theater information, but I didn't want to just play a review game - I also wanted them getting input. So I typed up a short text and used this QR code generator to create each of my codes. I created an A track, a B track, and a C track for each group by dividing each sentence into three fragments (see below).




I put students in groups of three (for the ONE group of four, we simply attached two students to each other, and they had to go about together) and assigned one of them A, one B and one C.  Then I gave them their initial clues - a sheet of paper with three codes on. The left code was for A, the middle for B and the right for C.

I had divided each sentence in the text into three fragments and spread them out across the three kids in the group, creating three scavenger hunt tracks in a given group. That way, no student had all the information they needed - they only had a fragment of each sentence. At each code, they had to write on a piece of paper (no taking pictures!) the fragment they were given, leaving enough space that they could cut it apart later.

When they came back, the groups sat down, cut their fragments apart, compared their information with the information from the rest of the group, and pieced the reading together with tape. Then they read it together.

I created two sets - 1 and 2 - so that people weren't all rushing out the door together, and at each location, I put set one on the left and set two on the right, so kids knew which code was theirs. (if i'd had a color printer, i'd have color-coded them instead).

Keith warns that this is not a low-prep activity, and he's right - it took me probably two hours to set it up, and there might still be a mistake or two somewhere. Nevertheless, the kids got good reading input and enjoyed themselves, and I enjoyed watching them put it together.

Attached are the master sets!

Text for the scavenger hunt
Papers to give students at the beginning
Master set of QR codes, locations, etc
(the fragment is the fragment; the parenthetical is their clue; the italicized statement are a reminder to me of where to put/where I put the qr code)