QR Challenge: The great purge

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. What does the name Stalin mean?	answer
2. How would you describe Stalin’s childhood?	answer
3. How did the crisis of WWI lead to revolution and the overthrow of Czarist Russia?	answer
4. Who were the Whites? The Reds? Which side won the civil war?	answer
5. What did Lenin’s assessment of Stalin reveal about his character?	answer
6. How did Stalin deal with the rick Kulaks who didn’t want to surrender their land to the Communists?	answer
7. What was the purpose of the “gulags”?	answer
8. How was Stalin able to fool so many world leaders?	answer
9. How was propaganda used to develop a cult of personality around Stalin?	answer
10. How did the purges leave the USSR vulnerable and weak when WWII started?	answer
11. Why was it so unusual for Stalin to sign a pact with Hitler in 1939? What was in it for both leaders?	answer
12. Who were the scapegoats (who did he blame for his own mistakes?) for Stalin’s military miscalculations?	answer
13. Why did Stalin want to control the countries of Eastern Europe after WWII?	answer
14. Stalin appeared paranoid. Provide one example of this paranoia.	answer
15. How did Khrushchev’s address of 1956 shock the Communist World?	answer
16. Following the break-up of the USSR under Gorbachev why are some people nostalgic for the Stalinist days?	answer
17. “The end justifies the means” How is this a motto for a dictator like Stalin?	answer

 

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