Pear Deck to the Rescue- 1/9/2021

It is no secret that I am a huge Pear Deck fan! As my district and school have navigated virtual learning, it has indeed become a game changer. As a result, we became a Pear Deck Premium school this year. Pear Deck has not only enabled my teachers to create amazing interactive experiences, but also to examine their students' progress through the teacher dashboard.

During my weekly tech tips, I have been sharing all of the amazing ways that my teachers are using Pear Deck. I have been truly astounded the amazing ways that they have been engaging their students using this tool. So I asked them if I could amplify their awesome work on my blog; luckily, they said yes.

Ms. Liberatore

Ms. Liberatore really loves doing assessments in Pear Deck- EVERY assessment, for EVERY subject is done in it. She loves it because it forces the kids to stay with her on each question (since in first grade they read the questions and answer choices to them).

It also really helps her to know which kids have not started their slide yet from the names at the bottom. That allows her to prompt them to get going and helps so she does not have to go back to a question just for one kid.

** She has really been loving doing word searches on Pear Deck. She had been previously trying to do them on Google Slides with moveable circles, but then realized – how easy would it be for them to highlight it in Pear Deck

Ms. Char loves using the Pear Decks for math and science in particular. Being able to guide the students step by step through some of the lessons and then giving them immediate feedback is extremely helpful, particularly in the virtual setting. 😊

She also likes the takeaways and the ability for the students and parents to look at what the kids have written or drawn on each of the slides. It helps deepen their understanding and allows me to see those students who are really struggling. It holds them accountable for doing the work because I can see who is and who is not responding.

Ms. Char

Ms. Oberdick

As the librarian, her favorite way to use Pear Deck is for class read-aloud lessons. It has been a fantastic way to allow students to see the pictures in the books clearly and engage with the story. Students can interact with the text and illustrations and share their thinking and questions as we read together.

TIP: She tries to incorporate at least one of each type of Pear Deck slide (text, drawing, draggable, etc.) in each lesson to differentiate and keep it interesting. If she wants to make a lesson asynchronous, she utilizes the audio feature and record the story text on each slide. She also loves that she can share a spreadsheet with classroom teachers for formative assessment and participation tracking purposes.

Ms. Field

Ms. Field uses Pear Deck for her students to make mood meters.

Ms. Layton loves using Pear Deck. In math, she uses it for spiral review and would you rather questions. During language arts, she has students reflect on what they have read and share thoughts in books. Lastly, during social studies and science, her students use Pear Deck to do reflections, check in questions and thinking routines like See, Think, Wonder.

Ms. Layton

Kindergarten Team

Ms. Bryan, Ms. Philips, Ms. Belcher, and Ms. Lazcano

In Kindergarten, the teachers have been using Pear Deck in a few different ways. In Language Arts, they've used slides with 2-3 letter cards on them. They give a letter sound and students move a colored dot to the card representing the sound. They've also done letter card slides and had a “snowball fight”. They make a sound and students use the white large pencil tool to “throw snowballs” at the corresponding card.

In math, they’ve used slides to have students fill ten frames, draw lines from groups of items to the correct number, and draw to represent numbers that we call out.

They’ve enjoyed using Pear Deck in our instruction as a way to engage all students at the same time. It’s beneficial to be able to use the teacher dashboard and watch in real time as they practice the lessons. They can see if students understand letter sounds, 1-to-1 number correspondence, number writing, following directions. They’ve been impressed with how well these young students have been able to utilize this learning tool! Check out the examples below:)

So for this blog post, my teachers are the stars! I am so proud to work with such an exceptional staff. I love when teachers take the ideas shared in a learning opportunity and make it their own. True awesomeness!

#SangsterStrong!

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