QR Challenge: Story Detectives

Created using the ClassTools QR Treasure Hunt Generator

Teacher Notes

A. Prior to the lesson:

1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.

2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to

• Download a QR reader (e.g. I-Nigma | NeoReader | Kaywa) onto their mobile devices
• Bring these devices into the lesson.

3. Print out the QR codes.

4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.

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B. The lesson:

1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.

2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.

3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!

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C. TIPS / OTHER IDEAS

4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.

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Questions / Answers (teacher reference)

Question	Answer
1. Mrs. Frisby, the head of a family of field mice, lived in an underground house in a vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon. Although she was a widow (her husband had died only the preceding summer), Mrs. Frisby was able, through luck and hard work, to keep her family -there were four of them- happy and well fed.
2. She looked at the sun; it was setting behind the trees. She thought of Timothy, and of the medicine she was carrying. Yet she knew she could not leave this foolish crow here to be killed.
3. Then one day at the end of February, Mrs. Frisby's younger son, Timothy, fell sick. His head felt as if he had a high fever and his pulse was very fast.
4. And then, as if to make things worse, she heard a sound that filled her with alarm. It came from across the fence in the farmyard, a loud, sputtering roar. It was Mr. Fitzgibbon starting his tractor.
5. The poor mouse spoke with a sob in her throat for the owl had said exactly what she had feared he would say. That she had no real hope for Timothy. The owl had said, in effect: Either Timothy alone must die, or they all must die together.
6. Mrs. Frisby was afraid. Then she thought of Timothy, and of the big steel plow blade. She told herself: I have no choice. If there is any chance that the owl might be able to help me, to advise me, I must go.
7. Mrs. Friby could not quite get rid of a nagging worry that kept flickering in her mind. It was the thought of Moving Day. When the winter is over, they must move out of the garden and back to the meadow or pasture. For as soon as the weather allows, Farmer Fitzgibbon's tractor comes rumbling through, pulling the sharp-bladed plow through the soil turning up every foot of it. No animal caught in the garden that day is likely to escape alive. And the worry was this: If Moving Day came too soon, Timothy would not be well enough or strong enough to move.
8. "Did you say Mrs. Frisby? Related to Jonathan Frisby?" the owl questioned. "Yes, he was my husband. He was Timothy's father." answered Mrs. Frisby in a scared voice. "I will say this," said the owl, drawing back a little and looking at her in a new way. "If you are Jonathan's Frisby's widow, that puts matters into a different light...then perhaps it can be done. Perhaps there is a way your son's life might just possibly be saved. You must go to the rats."
9. That afternoon Mrs. Frisby told the children that she must leave them to confer again with the rats. When she thought of the danger she would face in just a few more hours, she wanted to kiss them all goodbye. But knowing that Timothy, at least, was already suspicious, she did not dare; but told them only that they should not worry if she was a little late getting home for supper.

 

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