Pear Deck Part II

Exploring Pear Deck Part II

Pear Deck is a Google add-on in Google Slides that makes your Slides much more interesting and it helps
with student engagement. It is a really easy to use add-on, but you might have to spend some time getting
used to some of their features. Some of the things you have to remember is to sign-up and start their 30-
day free trial. This way you will be able to get a real taste of using Pear Deck. I made the mistake to not
signing up for their 30-free trial last time. After I got a taste of their premium membership, I like Pear
Deck a lot more. Now, I keep extending my free trial but there will be a day that they will stop me from
extending it. I am considering showing Pear Deck to the rest of my team and convince them to use it as
well. Hopefully, we will be able to get their premium membership soon paid by our administrators.

Here is an image showing you what each membership allows you to do:

This time around, I chose to use Pear Deck to review “Context Clues.” Context clues are hard to grasp so
we’ve been practicing a lot. I used Pear Deck as a formative assessment and got a taste of using this add-on
this way. Students liked it a lot more than last time because now they know how to use it and what to expect
from it. They struggle with critical thinking, so the more we practice the better they will be. After we were
done with the Slides, I was able to pull up their responses and have a conference with each on of them the
following day. My students and I were able to see where they needed help with more. The majority struggled
identifying what type of clue would help them understand the “unknown vocabulary word.” Thus, I was able
to have a conversation with each one of them and give them some suggestions on how to do that and what
they should be focusing on next time.

Here is a snapshot of what I see when I want to pull up their responses:

Here is a sample of one of my student’s responses:

Additionally, Pear Deck lets you ask questions that would arise at that moment. You simple click on
“+New Question.”

That way you can have the students process their answers before they say it out loud. Also, you can have a
record of their answers as well.

Below you will see the Pear-Deck Google Slide I created . As you go through it, you will able to see that I
used the idea that Ms. Dana Dembeck (guest speaker from one of my classes) utilized to help us understand
how powerful images are. Furthermore, I used Kirsten Kaboodle’s Context clues ideas on my slide to review
the material again with my students. I really like all the ideas she has. Please check her out when you can!

Bottom line is that I LOVE Pear Deck and I am slowly getting used to on how to maximize the use of it.
I am a little sad that my free-trial will end soon but I will be probably using other Google accounts to keep
using the premium membership trial until I don’t have enough accounts.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and I hope you have a wonderful weekend! :)