QR Code Poetry Readings

The 4th and 5th graders have been working with our poet in residence, and have built up nice portfolios.  After spring break, I will have the kids make audio recordings of their poems on the ipods and email them to my Dropbox account.  From there I will get a public link and paste the link into a Google doc.  The Google doc has a bit of script that automatically generates a QR code for each URL.  I print the codes and pass them out.

The kids glue them onto posters advertising their poetry.  The reading community scans the code to hear the poem.  I loaned out devices, but borrowers had to leave their shoes as collateral!

Kids also made cards for National Poetry Week to leave for random people at local restaurants. Each card had a code for people to scan, as well as a greeting from the reader.  I hope they brightened someone's day!

Native American poetry

The recordings from Heart of the Bitterroot are exactly what I needed to help inspire my young poets. The students can listen for the use of common poetic devices, such as repetition, breaks, and imagery.

The recordings also show the children how powerful a reading can be when paced properly and enhanced with background music. This collection will be a great model for them when they record and publish their own original work.

Each year, I have my students use Audacity, a free audio editing program to record their poetry readings. We then publish the recordings as podcasts as well as putting them on MP3 players for checkout from the library. It's a great project which addresses numerous Common Core standards.