A few months back, I wrote about the beginning steps for a project I designed, called The Survey Project, which can be found here. Our class completed this experience. I am happy to report that this project was not only successful and fun for the students, but for the teacher!  Here was the first page of the overview for the project. I made an effort to use my write-up as written, in order to review its feasibility and clarity.

Objective: Students will create survey questions centered around their community using the online program Fluid Surveys. Students will generate QR codes, print them out, and post them at key locations in the community. Students will analyze data collected from their survey questions through tallying and interpreting the information. Students will write a letter and sent and/or present to local council representatives about their results and opinion on how to address an issue, if needed.

Grades: 3-12 (This lesson was originally written for a 3rd grade class, but the concept can be modified and adapted/aligned for almost any grade).

Standards (3rd grade):

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1a Introduce the topic or text they are writing about, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure that lists reasons.
  
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.1b Provide reasons that support the opinion.
  
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.5 With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.
  
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.6 With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
  
• CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.B.3 Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories.
  

Other:

• With guidance from the teacher, student survey questions will be inputted online.
  
• With guidance from an adult, students will interact with their local community to understand what successes and challenges residents face in their town, by placing QR codes in key locations to collect data.
  
• Students will analyze data collected from their survey by tallying and interpreting the information.
  
• Students will draw a bar graph that represents the information collected in their survey.
  
• Students will learn what a council member is and what they do for their community.
  
• With assistance from their teacher, students will make contact via email, letter or in person with a city council member(s) to share their findings.
  
  

Equipment/Materials Needed: laptop, Fluid Survey program, paper or digital text document. Note: the Fluid Survey iPad app version can also be used to present surveys to an audience by the creator. Fluid Survey is a free program, but for for additional features such as graphs to print, a monthly upgrade is needed.

Vocabulary: survey, data, results, graphs, analyze, community, outreach, frequent, axis, objectives, tally

The project was divided up into different activities. Here are the general sections, with my reflection for each one.

Activity 1 - Introduction to types of surveys, vocabulary, and a partner online activity to fill in their Activity 1 worksheet (see attached document below).

Reflection: The introduction went great. It is important to give background information for any project in a way that best works for your student population/age. How can you relate the content to them? Since I have younger students, I found a website for them to directly go to in order to fill out information for the worksheet, but it was up to the students to figure out what information they thought was important to add on their worksheet, rather than me telling them what to write and what was important.  I wanted to see how they were able to understand the information as well deciding how to communicate their understanding. We had a great follow-up discussion, where all students were able to share their insights.

Activity 2 - Brainstorm a topic related to community that student feels is important and brainstorming survey questions around approved topic.

Reflection: The students really took off with this. They were excited at the prospect of doing something for their city that people would participate in. It gave the project a sense of importance to them. They came up with topics related to recycling, littering, types of stores, quality of community parks, crime, and more!

I knew that what makes a good survey question would require more background information. I did end up doing a mini-lesson on a separate day around types of survey questions and the kinds of answers one needs to give a user in order to measure the results. I viewed this as a meaty part of the project. After students brainstormed their questions, I met with each team to review and talk out how to hone their questions. As writing good survey questions is often not easy for adults to do, I was impressed with how most students understood this concept and how some took off with it.

Activity 3- Create their survey online by choosing the best type of question format and typing in their questions.

Reflection: This went very smoothly, for most teams. The UI of Fluid Surveys is pretty straight-forward, which is one reason why I chose their survey program over others I had researched. I gave them a very general overview as a whole class, but left enough out that would require students to play around with the program to figure out. I did have several students who found this more difficult, but that is ok. Every student has their own personal skill set around technology, regardless of what I may have taught them in class. I also encourage students to collaborate and help each other, so my "experts" could help those who needed it.

Activity 4- Generate QR codes, making a poster explaining project, and posting up for people in the community.

Reflection: My class had previous experience with using QR codes. Another reason why I like Fluid Surveys is because they have the ability to generate a QR code within their program versus taking a link, finding a generator site, pasting etc. (been there, not so fun).  Super easy!

Activity 5 - Analyze data by use of tallying answers and meeting with teacher in their teams to discuss how they could view the data in different ways. Students then draw a bar graph that represents the data.

Reflection:  This was the other meaty section of learning. I had students practice first on how to tally and organize a sample survey I had made in partners. This was good practice and pretty easy for the students, as it turned out.  After they tallied their answers for each of their questions, I realized that students would find it challenging to be able to write this information into sentences, so I ended up taking my example survey and modeling how you can "report" the facts. I also did meet with each team to review their drafts of sentences and help them with this, due to their age. It was great practice in writing complete  informational sentences. If you have older students, this is an excellent way to observe and and assess critical thinking skills as well as writing structure. 

Since my students had background knowledge in creating a simple bar graph, this activity was pretty easy for most students. For those who struggled, it helped reinforce math concepts that had been previously taught. Students helped each other out, as needed.

Activity 6- Write a letter about the project with results and suggestions to local city council members
(Optional: Attending a city council meeting to experience first hand our system and process)

Reflection: Instead of having my kids write an entire letter on their own (they had been inundated with writing from other projects and testing), I created a guiding template for them to fill in blanks. I did give them some guiding verbiage to mode, such as "This suggests..." and "I recommend...".  This proved to be very helpful for them and for me. The original intention was to use the guide and have them write the entire letter out into their writing notebooks, but kids wanted to write on the actual worksheet, which I should have realized would happen. I would have made more lines for them to write on. The hardest part was understanding the sentences they drafted during analysis could directly be used in their letter, so I had to direct them where this needed to go in their letters.  After we had writing conference review on their drafts, students then typed up their letter.

I don't know who was more excited to drop off our letters and graphs to city hall, the students or me! It was great watching the city hall employee's expression change from listening to excitement and watch her smile grow as I explained what my manila envelope contained for city council members to review.

Some of the students and I will be attending the city council tomorrow evening. I look forward to sharing this experience with them! Overall, I was very pleased with this project and the multiple areas it addressed. My hope is to encourage others to think about how they can use a technology tool to enhance learner experience. Feel free to email me for additional information on this project.

Like many schools, my elementary school started purchasing iPads this past year for use with students. My principal is very supportive of technology and encouraged the staff to experiment and play with them in order to feel comfortable with using tablets down the road with our students. One day, he came to me with an idea of coming up with a lesson for my 3rd graders using a free app we had discovered that could also incorporate QR codes. I am definitely a person that if you propose a concept or idea to me, I will run with it!

I took these two components and created what I call the The Poetry Project.  This project incorporates writing, technology, problem solving, new common core standards and community outreach. The idea of community outreach is especially appealing to me, and I feel is an important aspect that should be a consistent theme that is integrated with projects and curriculum, in general.

First, what is a QR code? A QR code is essentially a type of bar code, like you would find on food products or on items you purchase at a store. Bar codes have been around for decades, but stores have mainly been the ones who have had the devices to scan them.

QR codes have been around since the 1990′s, but didn't become popular until the last five years, primarily due to mobile technology, which is accessible to the average consumer. This, coupled with free online scanning software that a person can download onto a mobile device, has made QR codes quite popular. QR codes work in the same fashion as bar codes, but tend to be used for directing someone to a site, an advertisement, information, etc.

I decided that I would incorporate the free app Haiku Deck with a poetry lesson on, you guessed it, haikus. The students were then introduced to the app. I am a proponent that less instruction is actually more, so I encouraged the students to play with the app and discover for themselves the various functions. (NOTE: always give explicit instruction on general rules,handling, care of technology tools before anything else. I tell my students, this is a tool, not a toy that you do do not own!). Then we came together and shared out what we had learned about using the app and the iPad as a whole class. Students then took their haikus they wrote from notebook into Haiku Deck. I loved seeing children engaged and the sense of accomplishment they felt when finishing their poem on the iPad. A pro of Haiku Deck is that it saves online within their site vs a download.

The second part was generating QR codes for each digital poem. I knew this would be a more challenging feat with 8-year olds.  I already pictured the minute steps that would be needed to be taught, such as what a “link” is, how to highlight, copy and paste a link, etc. and probably groaned softly under my breath.

We had used iPads for the first part, but I decided that it would be easier to have the kids use laptops for this activity. A quick survey showed most kids had never used a laptop before, so I made time to give a quick and dirty overview on laptops, as well as how they should be handled, etc. Here’s the general breakdown. These steps were modeled by me  to the class. I had my kids work in pairs, as I find for their age group, partners are way better, so they can help one another.

• Basics on how computers work (I will post a separate blog on this topic sometime)
• What a link is
• Different ways to highlight information- (I used Word to practice this first)
• What a QR Code is (I created a very basic digital presentation that I showed students, so they actually understood the concept!)
• Where you can create a QR code (online or with a smartphone- some kids knew this, as their parents had a scanner on their smartphone)
• Copying their link and then going to the QR generator page to paste it
• Printing out the QR code
• Verifying their QR code worked by using a downloaded scanner on the iPads

We were in the home stretch. All the hard work had been done. The last component was pasting our QR codes to colorful construction paper. We then discussed how we should “get people’s attention,” to encourage them to scan our codes. I likened it to instead of stopping to smell the roses, stop to read a poem. We decided on a tag line, “A Haiku for You! Scan me!” They also wrote their name and our school’s name on the bottom. The students were then instructed to hit the streets and choose a store, restaurant, library, etc. in the community and ask if they could place their haiku in their storefront. We discussed how you approach a store merchant and what to say, as well as using polite terms, even if the merchant declined their request.

Challenges/What I Learned

Did this project happen in a week span? No! I had no idea how long this process would take. If you constantly worry about timelines, you are apt to turn down opportunities for growth or a potentially awesome project. I simply integrated time for mini-lessons and work within other aspects of our day.

If I had to give a general time (excluding our time learning poetry and writing them first), I would say 6-8 sessions between 1/2 hour and 1 hour slots. Really, it depends on how you choose to approach and break down the above steps. Another a minor organizational challenge is knowing which QR code belonged to who, as they all just come out as big squares, with no availability to type in info that humans can read. I would have preferred this then having to take time to scan 22 QR codes with kids.

The main takeaway that one should always keep in mind is don’t give up! Technology can be overwhelming when you have 30 bodies in the class, technical issues, etc. Remember, it is ok not to be an expert and to learn with your students. It’s ok if that one lesson fizzled and not much got done. If you don’t practice, you will never improve on your own skills. We tell our students this all the time. This applies to adults as well!

What Did The Students Learn?

• What a haiku is and its structure
• Practice of basic grammar skills and spelling
• How to use an iPad
• How to use Haiku Deck
• How to highlight, copy and paste information
• What a QR code is and how people use it
• How to generate a QR code
• Why community outreach is important
• Making school/learning connections to the real world
• That kids can teach adults (there were a number of adults who did not know what those square, squiggly boxes they see around were!)

By empowering our students at any age with the idea that they can make a difference and have a voice is  one of the best lessons I can give to my students.