Pear Deck

Pear Deck is a popular formative assessment tool that allows teachers to design interactive presentations and engage students in learning through multiple choice questions, drag-and-drop and text-based prompts, drawing, interactive maps, and more. Teachers can create their own presentation slides or rely on Pear Deck lesson templates. Pear Deck can be used to enrich and support student learning, both asynchronously and synchronously. Students can use Pear Deck slides to learn at their own pace, or they can follow along with an instructor-driven lesson. Teachers can get instant feedback on the effectiveness of their lessons by using the dashboard and session review capabilities within PearDeck. Teachers can make student answers anonymous in order to encourage even the shiest of students to participate. Teachers can also share students’ answers with the class to extend the lesson. With the premium subscription, Pear Deck provides a lot of templates to use before, during, and after a lesson. Teachers can also install the Pear Deck add-on to their existing Google Slides or PowerPoint to make them interactive. There is no limit to the number of participants, so it can even be used for community forums, such as a virtual open house.  

Learning Activities


Students can use a text or drawing slide to label a scientific drawing. Scaffold learning by adding a word bank to the slide with “must have” labels. 


Students can use a text slide to create notes about a topic by jotting the big idea and three important details (“boxes and bullets“).


Students can use a text slide to generate ideas during a narrative writing unit by jotting small moment stories (e.g., “Think of a person, place, or thing that matters to you and then list small moment stories. Choose one to write about in your writer’s notebook”). This allows the teacher to quickly assess where students are in the writing process and if their piece will fit the definition of a narrative.


Students can use a draggable slider to round numbers to the nearest ten, hundred, etc… 


Students can use a drawing slide to proofread a sentence and add appropriate editing marks. Scaffold learning by focusing on just two or three editing marks to start and provide the marks and meanings at the top of the slide. 


Students can use a text slide to build self-management skills by jotting a hope and dream for the upcoming school year. Students can also take stock at the midpoint of the school year and set goals.