Teaching World Languages With Pear Deck

There are many fun ways to formatively assess your students and help them practice language. The different question types in Pear Deck allow for quick assessments as well as deep thinking. Here are some ideas:

Draggable Questions

• Practice following instructions:
  Give students instructions to do something specific with a Draggable, like “Put the pear under the table.”

• Order the sentence:
  To practice sentence construction, first break up a sentence into different segments. Then ask students to put them in order by dragging the number icons to each segment.

Drawing Questions

• Fill in the blank:
  You can use Drawing Slides to let students fill in the blank. Just type your sentence in the text area on your slide, leaving blanks for certain words. Students can draw or type in the answer.

• Writing foreign languages:
  Since some languages can be difficult to type on Western keyboards, you can use the Drawing Slide to let students practice their writing skills. Like ask Chinese language learners to write “This is a pear” on a blank canvas of a Drawing Slide.
• Draw a picture to illustrate/translate a sentence:
  A fun way to show understanding of a sentence is to let students illustrate the sentence instead of doing a direct translation.

• Correct mistakes in a sentence:
  Type a sentence in with mistakes. Then choose that sentence as the “Canvas” for students to draw upon and ask them to correct the sentence.

Text Questions

• Translate and discuss a sentence:
  Ask students to type their translation of a sentence. Show the answers on the screen and discuss the slight differences. Which do students think is the most accurate?
• Explain the differences between two similar sentences:
  Type two different but similar sentences and ask students to translate and explain the differences.

Number Questions

• Translate a number:
  For learning how to say and write numbers in a different language, you can do a rapid series of questions like this.

Multiple Choice Questions

• Which translation is the best:
  Give students a number of options and let them pick which translation they think is best for the sentence.
• What do you need to practice today:
  You can always use Pear Deck for metacognitive questions as well. Use a quick Multiple Choice question to let students think about and choose which area they need to focus on most (like listening, writing, or speaking), then break them into activity stations.

These can be applied toward any language instruction whether you want to assess what students understand, give them some practice, or let them think critically about conveying meaning in another language.