Do you ever feel like your presentations and lessons in class are becoming a bit more routine? Are you looking to enhance how to teach? If you can answer yes to one or both of these questions, you have come to the right place.
If you have not heard of Pear Deck it is a Google Slides add on. It is used to help teachers create interactive slides. It is very similar to a slide show, however, instead of a static slide, you can input a Pear Deck slide and make the presentation wow your audience.
How to Get Pear Deck
This is so easy. Open Google Slides and go to Add-Ons on the top toolbar. Search for Pear Deck and click on the add button (it might say free). Viola! You are done.
How Does it Work?
Really, adding Pear Deck to your already created (or new) Slides is super easy. Here is a brief step by step:
- Add on the Pear Deck extension
- Find or create a Slides presentation
- Add Pear Deck slide templates to your Slide deck
- Choose the style of question you want to ask
- Present your lesson by sharing a code
- Allow students to participate
These steps may seem like a lot, but honestly, they are super easy. You can find out more about this from Pear Deck Here. Here is a little video to show you how it works.
Ideas for using Pear Deck
- Pre Question – Find out what students already know about a specific culture topic.
- Comprehension check – see if students are following what you are signing by asking a question or 5. It is really fun.
- Moving on – ask students if they are ready to move on. The answers are anonymous so you are more than likely going to get an honest answer. This also works great with
student I can statements. - Predict – find out what they think will happen next in the picture or movie talk you are doing.
- Exit ticket – find out what students have learned during a lesson by using an exit ticket.
- Sequencing – have students put items in sequential or chronological order.
- Survey – Ask students what they want more work on…vocabulary, grammar, dialogues…
- Multiple
choice – ask students what the best answer is for a statement you give or a new vocabulary word.
***Update: Pear Deck has recently added slide templates specifically for World Langauge teachers. Now you can do pre-assessment, during assessment, and post-assessment activities with pre-made templates that are interactive for students. You can read more about it here.
Here is an example of how I used Pear Deck to enhance a lesson on conjunctions.
I used the pre-made template found under the WOrld Language templates. I came up with 6 short stories that included a conjunction in each. I put some images on one side of the slide that matched my stories and the words on the other side of the slide. I didn’t use them all.
I signed each story then gave students a chance to match the conjunction with the image. I purposely created stories that used the conjunction words but not as a conjunction. This let me know if they truly understood. For example, I used WRONG to simply state something was incorrect. The word did not function in the story as a conjunction.
I hope you try Pear Deck in your next class lecture. It is really great on the spot assessment that is interactive.
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