Let’s Go ’Round the World!

As a former world history teacher who studied Asian languages, I know how often humanities courses get the short shrift.  As national standards and testing focus heavily on ELA and Math, so do curriculum and tools. And yet! Just as important—both in addition to ELA and Math, but also as aids to comprehension in those subjects—is the study of humans in language, culture, history, and society.

In the last month, we’ve released both Social Studies and World Languages Templates in our Slide Library. You can insert these templates into any Social Studies or World Language lesson, quickly tweaking them to match your specific lesson.

Here are some examples:

Checks for understanding and formative asessments

Formative Assessments are an important part of any classroom. They give you quick insight into your students’ level of understanding and enable you to make changes to your instruction. Pear Deck Formative Assessments make that possible in the moment. You can shift easily from instruction to formative assessment and back again, changing pace as needed to fit your students. Here are some Formative Assessment templates for Social Studies and World Languages.

World Language Templates

Matching Terms: Here is a simple Template showing how to use a Drawing Slide to do a matching activity.  You can change the terms and images to fit your lesson. Or, if you prefer, you can change the images to definitions.  This has obvious uses for World Languages courses, but can also be used in a Social Studies lesson.

Fill in the Blanks: Another similar idea is to use Pear Deck to fill in the blanks. In this template, you can quickly change the terms in the word bank and the sentences to match your lesson.

Prepositions! This template demonstrates a fun use of a Draggable™ Slide. Students can drag a taco icon to the spot indicated by your sentence. Edit the sentence to tell students where to put the taco (for example, on, under, to the left of, inside of the desk).

You can get more complex by adding extra Draggable icons for students to move around—and you can, of course, change the desk. To do so, go to the Pear Deck Sidebar and hit the back arrow to get out of the Slide Library. Once you are back to the main menu, scroll down to the custom question area and click on “Draggable.”  Now you can change the shape, quantity, and color of the icons students can drag.

Translate: Being able to translate from one language to another is an important part of foreign language study. One way to practice that in Pear Deck is to use a Text Slide. Change the sentence to one that fits your lesson, and let students type in their translation (of course, you can have them translate in either direction). When you show their answers anonymously on the projector screen, you can talk about slight differences in their translations. Are some clearer than others? Is there more than one correct way?  

Another fun way to check for understanding is to have students illustrate the sentence.

Social Studies Templates

Locate on a Map: Use this template to prompt students to locate particular places. You can change the map and legend to best fit your lesson. Studying about a particular continent? Have students locate countries and rivers. Studying your own city? Have students locate special landmarks. It’s very flexible and builds important map-reading abilities.

Chronology: This template is great for assessing students’ knowledge or chronology. Simply replace the events listed with ones relevant to your lesson. Students can then drag the numbers 1-5 to put them in order. You can do a similar check for understanding with the drawing slide template, in which students can draw a line to connect the event to the proper place on the timeline.

Critical and creative thinking

These templates are designed to push students to delve beyond the surface and think deeply.

Impact of Geography: While having map reading skills and having a basic familiarity with world (and local) geography is important, so too is understanding the role geography plays in our day-to-day, as well as in the evolution of society. Place a map on this slide that is relevant to your lesson; then, prompt students to think about how the physical features of the land that could impact the people who live in it.

Cause and Effect: While we want our students to understand the basic chronology of important events, we also want them to understand how one event can lead to the next. This template is ready to go with little editing. Simply add in the event or societal change you want students to consider, and you’re ready to teach!

World Language Templates

Ask a Question: In the study of foreign languages, we want to push our students to go beyond vocabulary memorization or translation—we want to harness their creativity, curiosity, and desire to communicate. Replace the image in this template with new and interesting images related to your culture of study. Students can use their budding language skills to formulate questions or observations about the image. Display these questions anonymously on the board to foster conversation.

I hope these templates inspire ideas for both formative assessments and deeper thinking. You can find both the World Languages and Social Studies Templates in the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or PowerPoint Online Add-in Slide Library. Or download them below!

‍

Get the World Languages Deck

Get the Social Studies Deck