Pear Deck is a tool that instantly makes your Google Slides interactive. Imagine if you could engage every student in your class, every day. What if you could instantly see who’s confused and who’s ready for more? That’s the power of Pear Deck. With the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on, you can add the magic of formative assessments and interactive questions to your presentations right from Google Slides.

Setting Up Your Premium Pear Deck License

1. Go to the Pear Deck website at www.peardeck.com.

2. Sign in with your school Google account. This will automatically recognize your Premium access.

3. Install the Pear Deck Power-Up Extension to ensure videos, animations, and GIFs embedded in your Pear Deck slides play exactly the way they should (optional - but highly recommended)!

4. Start exploring! Create a new Pear Deck lesson by opening Google Slides and selecting “Add-ons” > “Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on” > “Open Pear Deck Add-on.”

Birdville Slideshow - Setting Up Your Account

Activity Types & Teacher Creation

Teachers can create their own Pear Decks by starting with a Slide deck, then using the Pear Deck sidebar to insert interactive slides. They can also browse the Pear Deck Template Library for ready-to-use formative checks, SEL prompts, and more. Once finished, teachers present in Student-Paced or Instructor-Paced mode and get instant feedback from every learner.

Birdville Slideshow - Activity Types
Birdville One-Pager: Draggable

Birdville One-Pager: Drawing
Birdville One-Pager: Free Response: Text
Birdville One-pager: Free Response: Number
Birdville One-Pager: Multiple Choice
Birdville One-Pager: Poll
Birdville One-Pager: Website
Birdville One-Pager: Audio

Pre-Made Templates & Certified Lessons

Pear Deck's Content Orchard is a comprehensive resource designed to streamline lesson planning by offering a variety of pre-made templates and certified lessons. Educators can access over 1,000 standards-aligned Math and ELA lessons tailored for grades 3–12. These lessons are crafted to align with Common Core, TEKS, and other state standards, ensuring they meet educational requirements and reflect the Depth of Knowledge necessary for state assessments.

The Certified Content within the Content Orchard has been evaluated by educational experts for standards alignment, rigor, cultural relevance, and lack of bias. These lessons are fully customizable, allowing teachers to adapt them to their specific classroom needs. Additionally, the Content Orchard includes Quick Check templates for Math and ELA, enabling educators to assess student comprehension and tailor lessons in real-time .

Birdville Slides: Pre-Made  & Certified Content
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Adding Premade Templates
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Accessing the Content Orchard Resources
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Accessing Certified Content

AI-Generated Instant Decks

Pear Deck's Instant Pear Decks is an AI-powered feature that enables teachers to generate interactive, standards-aligned lessons in under 30 seconds. By inputting a topic, standard, or existing materials (such as URLs, PDFs, or images), educators can create customizable lessons tailored to specific grade levels, subjects, and instructional goals. The AI-generated decks include various lesson types, including full lessons, targeted instruction, and exit tickets, all of which are editable within Google Slides.

Birdville Slides:  AI-Generated Instant Decks
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Create Instant Decks with AI
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Quick Prompts

Starting a Session

Starting a live session in Pear Deck allows you to lead students through an interactive lesson in real time, fostering engagement and immediate feedback. This process enables you to guide students through the lesson, view their responses in real time, and adjust instruction as needed.

Birdville Slides: Starting a Session
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Present a Session
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Run a Session in Projector View
Pear Deck Help Article: Student-Paced Lessons
Pear Deck Help Article: Your Account Settings

 Teacher Dashboard

The Pear Deck Teacher Dashboard shows students' names next to their responses and helps teachers review and evaluate individual student work. With the Dashboard, teachers can also invite co-teachers to join the lesson, provide immediate feedback for students, as well as highlight responses or hide them from the classroom view during discussions. With the Dashboard, teachers are able to gather more insight into how their students are doing, during, and after a lesson! 

Birdville Slides: The Teacher Dashboard
Birdville One Pager - Opening and Using the Teacher Dashboard
Birdville One Pager - Dashboard Response Layout Views
Birdville One Pager - Run a Session in Projector View
Birdville One Pager - Teacher Feedback
Birdville One Pager: Invite a Co-Teacher
Pear Deck Article: Use the Timer and Automatically Lock Screens
Pear Deck Article: How do I see Student Responses?
Pear Deck Teacher Dashboard Support

The Student Experience

In Pear Deck, the student experience is designed to be simple, interactive, and engaging. Students join a session by going to joinpd.com and entering a unique code or clicking a direct link. Once in, they view slides on their own device and respond to interactive questions in real time—like multiple choice, draggable, drawing, text, or number inputs. They also have access to teacher feedback, audio features and immersive reader during a Pear Deck session. 

Birdville Slides: The Student Experience
Pear Deck Tutorials for Students (YouTube video collection)
Pear Deck Article: Student-Paced Lessons
Pear Deck Article: Add Audio Recordings to Your Slides
Pear Deck Article: How to Use Classroom Climate
Pear Deck Article: Immersive Reader Integration
Pear Deck Article: Teacher Feedback

Canvas Integration

Interactive Pear Deck lessons can be embedded and accessed in Canvas using the Pear Deck external tool. Students can access their Pear Deck assignments without using a join code and teachers can monitor student progress, provide meaningful feedback, and assess student understanding of the Pear Deck lesson all within Canvas. 

Birdville Slides: Canvas Integration
Birdville One-Pager: Pear Deck: Canvas Integration

Post-Session Actions

After a Pear Deck session ends, teachers have access to several powerful post-session tools that support reflection, feedback, and ongoing learning. From the Pear Deck Teacher Dashboard, you can review student responses, assess understanding, and even add feedback to individual answers.

You can also publish Takeaways™, which generate a personalized Google Doc for each student with the slides and their responses—great for studying or parent communication. Additionally, sessions can be reopened in student-paced mode, allowing students to revisit and complete unfinished work. All data remains stored, making it easy to track progress over time and guide future instruction.

Birdville Slides: Post-Session Actions
Birdville One-Pager: Export Responses to a Spreadsheet
Birdville One-Pagers: Reflect & Review
Birdville One-Pagers: Takeaways
Pear Deck Article: What is a Session? Can I Delete a Session?

Flashcard Factory

Flashcard Factory was designed to transform the way students engage with vocabulary. When you play Flashcard Factory students pair up and work together to create dynamic and engaging flashcards. Students collaborate to illustrate and define terms, making learning vocab an active and social experience! 

 Birdville One-Pager: Flashcard Factory
Birdville Slides: Flashcard Factory
Pear Deck Article: Getting Started with Flashcard Factory
Pear Deck Article: Play the Flashcard Factory Game
Pear Deck Article: Create a Vocabulary List
Pear Deck Article: Studying with Flashcard Factory Sets
Pear Deck Flashcard Factory Support