Pear Deck: the Pear-fect way to Upgrade Google Slides Presentations

Jan 7
5 min read

By Gina Saldana, Davis Elementary

Looking for a way to make Slide presentations more interactive, engaging, and student centered? Need a quick, at a glance, measure of student understanding that compiles student answers in one place? Then slide with me into Pear Deck, the Pear-fect Google Slides extension for engagement, fun, and formative assessment.

What is Pear Deck? Pear Deck is an extension in Google Slides that puts you a click away to transforming any ordinary SlideShow into the Pear-fect interactive presentation. It allows you to integrate writing prompts, polls, drag and drop questions, and more into your Slides. It has automatically been installed in your Google Slides app this year by GISD. Check out this video to get a snapshot of what it’s like: What is Pear Deck? Pear Deck gives you the ability to take your self generated Slide Decks and turn them into an interactive math lesson where students can work out the problems on their screen (and you can see them doing it on yours), participate in a poll on their level of content knowledge before the lesson begins or to show which character in a text to which they most relate, drag and drop answers for younger learners (can work especially well with sound recognition), have students show their creativity by drawing a response (also great for prereaders and/or students who need modifications with written language). It is a way to differentiate, engage, and assess all in one package.
How does it work? Open up any Google Slide presentation that you are currently using with your students OR open a new Google Slide presentation. In the tool bar, click on the “Extensions” button. Select the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on, then click Open Pear Deck Add-on, as shown below.

		You will then see a Pear Deck toolkit on the right hand side of your screen. If you choose “Generate Instant Pear Deck,” Pear Deck will open a new tab with options for “certified content”. This is known as Pear Deck’s “Content Orchard.” The Content Orchard has templates for English Language Arts and Math lessons, as well as Quick Checks, Brain Breaks, Assessment & STAAR practice, SEL Lessons, and access to the Flashcard Factory. You will then be asked what you want to create. Depending on your needs, you can choose from the options available in the “Instant Lesson Packages,” choose a template from the Content Orchard, or transform an already existing Slides presentation. Templates are premade slide decks with a variety of lesson options for ELAR, Math, Social Studies, SEL and more. The Content Orchard has many choices that are great to integrate into math, ELA, and social studies content. With the autogenerated SEL lessons, you can also develop your classroom community through interactive questions and discussion. You can use it to gauge student feelings about a concept or topic, find out how their weekend went and find out how they connected emotionally to a story read aloud, among many more options.
On the top right hand corner, you can choose to integrate Pear Deck into an existing slide presentation you have created. Once you click this button, it will ask you to give Pear Deck permission to access your files and it will guide you to your drive to select a file to use. You can make your lesson interactive with 8 different interactive choices, which allow students to participate in a lesson in real time or in self paced mode. Which mode you choose will depend on the type of instruction you are providing. For instance, if you want to use Pear Deck as a test or concept review, you can add it in self paced mode in your Canvas page for your class. This can also work during student stations rotations. You can have students participating in your Pear Deck during one of their station or WIN rotations. They will still have an interactive element, and you will immediately have feedback with each question type you choose to see if your students need reteaching or understand the concept. This Pear Deck 101 video gives you the details on each type of question and how to integrate them into your lesson slides. Here is an example of what you will see when you click on Poll in the menus.
This screen asks if you want to add a poll to your presentation.	You will use this screen to enter your poll choices.	Then you type in your options and click Add to Slide. A bar will appear at the bottom of the slide.	Click Start Lesson in the top right hand toolkit box for students to join your lesson.
Once you click Start Lesson, you will see this screen which allows you to choose from Practice Mode or Graded Mode and also allows you to choose if you want students to participate live (with you as the instructor with each step) or self guided (in which students work on the presentation independently.		In instructor paced activity mode your students will see a screen like the one shown here. The will use the url and code to access your presentation.
Once your students start submitting their answers for the slide, you will see a Show Responses button on the bottom toolbar of your screen.
When you click Show Responses you will see student answers in a visual format. You can also choose to “lock screens” if you want to only allow for a certain amount of time for a particular question.
In this way, Pear Deck is one accessible and visual way to conduct formative assessments, check for understanding, and have immediate responses from students about their learning. You can see the response of each student in your class in real time. It works with all subject areas. When multiple students have joined your Pear Deck, you will see all of their responses on one screen and immediately be able to gauge understanding.
And Yet, There’s More…
		Within Pear Deck’s main screen you will also see options, including Flashcard Factory (which is an excellent interactive drawing and writing creation tool for students to practice comprehension of vocabulary in an engaging gamified way & also provides flashcards for them to study with at the end). The “District Library" button gives you access to Pear Decks created by Garland ISD teachers that have been shared as a whole within the District. This is a searchable library that you can also publish to if you have a lesson that you think will benefit others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AomLoCSeYHc		Too many options? Not sure where to begin, try Pear Start. Similar to School ai, Pear Start is Pear Deck’s approach to AI. It has a host of AI generators for education, including generators for lesson plans, worksheets, multiple choice assessments, YouTube video questions, a standards exemplar generator, and more. You can access Pear Start by going to start.peardeck.com/login and signing in with your GarlandISD email. Then you will be taken to a screen that looks like the one below.
Still hungry for more Pear-fect treats? Check out the Pear Deck You Tube Channel. It has videos including how to integrate a Pear Deck into a Canvas assignment. You can also check out Pear Deck’s library of articles with step by step directions on how to use Pear Deck in your instruction. Whether it’s adding interactivity to a Slide deck that you’ve already created or letting Pear Deck be your guide, Pear Deck is an engaging, fun, format for instruction and formative assessment. Take a bite out of knowledge with Pear Deck tools.