Pear Deck FAQ - Part 2

Welcome to my second Pear Deck FAQ!

In this post, I'll be answering more frequently asked questions about Pear Deck, as well as how to incorporate it into the classroom. If you missed my first post, no worries! You can check it out here. As a refresher, Pear Deck is an interactive presentation platform that allows you to add questions, polls, text, and images to your slides.

Now, let's get started with this week's FAQs...

• Can you use them as a station activity?

• Is Pear Deck something everyone goes through as a class together (i.e. whole group instruction)?

• Do you use them for every unit or will they lose their flare?

Can you use them as a station activity?

Pear Decks are a great interactive tool to use in station rotation learning! If you look at my Mt. Vesuvius and the Lost City of Pompeii activities, you’ll see that there is a Pear Deck option that can be incorporated into the stations. Use the graphic organizers to help students organize what they see in each artifact while giving them the opportunity to make a "rough sketch" of the artifact. You can also create a stand-alone center using Pear Deck. With this, I would recommend making the slides deck short enough to fit the time you give students at each station.

Is Pear Deck something everyone goes through as a class together (i.e. whole group instruction)?

With Pear Deck, you have the option to use either instructor-paced or student-paced mode for your lesson. This is incredibly useful, as you can adapt your lesson on the fly to ensure that your students are always engaged and understanding the material. If you want to do a whole-group lesson, then the instructor-paced mode is the way to go. However, you can also have students work in student-paced mode. This is great for when you want to let them explore the material at their own pace, or for when you want to focus on small groups or individual students.

I use the flexibility of the student vs. instructor-paced modes in my Document Based Question activities turned Pear Decks. I can have students work in pairs or in small groups with me at their own pace. However, if I want to teach a specific skill or model something students as a whole aren't understanding, I switch the slides to instructor-paced mode so we are all on the same page. Don't worry - it will not delete a student's current progress and they can return to the slide they were working on later. Take a look at a few examples of lessons where I do this with ease:

⭐ Causes of the American Revolution Pear Deck Google Slides Mini Bundle

⭐ Why Crusade? Crusades Mini DBQ with Pear Deck Google Slides

Do you use them for every unit or will they lose their flare?

I use Pear Deck for every unit because it is so versatile and provides many options for differentiation. The Immersive Reader feature is especially great for classes with a range of different reading needs. It includes text-to-speech, font sizing, language translation, and more.

Pear Deck doesn't have to lose its charm. It all depends on how you use the slides. If you engage students in meaningful ways, they will not get bored as quickly, as many teachers fear. When surveying my students, most said they would rather have an assignment broken down into Pear Deck slides vs. a large Google Doc. They also appreciate the voice they have in their learning by using Pear Deck, as they can have their answers shared out anonymously with classmates.