Once again the tech integration team honored Weymouth educators who regularly used the Pear Deck platform to teach, assess, and support the needs of their students. Use was measured by “moments of student engagement” which is the number of times students participated in a Pear Deck activity or question. Prized Pears and certificates were given to 10 teachers to the delight of their students who shared in the glory of participating in the lesson 44, 487 times.
The Pear Deck engagement leaders for May 2021 are: Academy, Brittany Lamont; Adams, Ellen Foley and Stephanie Margetts; Hamilton, Madeline Connelly; Murphy, Lynn Howard; Nash, Calley Yocum; Seach, Kristina Quigley; Wessagusset, Jennifer Pelaggi; Weymouth High School, Anne Rowsell and Katherine Wilbers.
Pear Deck allows teachers of all grades and subjects to add interactive elements to Google Slides turning a typical slide deck into a student response system, a formative assessment system, a student discussion board, and/or an outlet for student creativity. Teachers create the slides from pre-made templates provided by Pear Deck or by adding interactive elements to self-created slides. Teachers choose from five types of interactive questions:
- Draggable questions take the form of agree/disagree or thumbs up/thumbs down
- Drawing questions allow students to free draw in a blank space or on a grid
- Free response questions have short text, long text, and number capabilities
- Multiple choice questions take the form of yes/no, true/false, or A, B, C, D
- Number responses that can be shown either on a grid or on a whisker plot
Students access Pear Deck from the joinpd.com website, which is posted to Clever, and use an access code that is unique to each session. Teachers can also send a direct link to their students, for example by posting to Google Classroom. Because each session is unique, teachers can reuse the same deck with different groups of students. and team of teachers can create a deck together during PLC time and use it with their respective classes.
The Pear Deck platform is highly engaging and provides a channel for all student voices to be heard. When a teacher poses a question, all of the students respond. Teachers then have the option of sharing student responses anonymously with the class or reviewing responses and providing feedback to students at a later time. The “Classroom Climate” feature allows teachers to take quick social-emotional assessments and organize responses so that struggling students can be instantly identified. Pear Deck also helps teachers scaffold instruction to support students’ diverse learning needs. Teachers can add audio recordings with instructions, support, or descriptions. The immersive reader integration supports students who need text read aloud or translated into another language.
Anyone wishing to learn more about Pear Deck is invited to participate in this Self Paced Tutorial.
