Tag:

bell ringers

The Benefits of Using Pear Deck in the Classroom

by Jeannie Hipp January 3, 2023

written by Jeannie Hipp

When it comes to motivating the unmotivated students in our classrooms, we can’t change the cards we are dealt, only how we play the game to secure their attention. So what’s the answer to going from ordinary to extraordinary, best practice-based instruction and engaging every student in your classroom? One game changer I’ve found for my classroom is Pear Deck for Google Slides. From beginning to end, bellringer to exit ticket, educators have the power to turn their pedagogy mindset from teacher-led to student-centered.

With a free account, you can:

Design brilliant lessons with interactive questions, polls, quizzes, formative assessments

Work seamlessly with powerful classroom tools from Google and Microsoft

Control the pace of class and project student answers anonymously

Enable students to join a session anonymously without email login

Keep students in sync with Locks and Timers

Ready-to-teach templates designed by educators

Teach vocabulary with Flashcard Factory*

Source

Here’s a video overview with information on how Pear Deck works.

What Are the Benefits of Using Pear Deck?

Thousands of Customizable Templates in Google Slides

Pear Deck works directly with Google Slides and Google Classroom, which enables Google Education to be maximized when it comes to e-learning in the classroom. Once it’s been installed as a Google Slides add-on feature, you’re ready to double down with an array of options to assess your students’ critical thinking skills while holding them accountable for their learning. Pear Deck houses thousands of templates you can customize to align with any content. From littles (k-2), math, reading, social studies, science, etc., you can find any template suitable for editing as a bell ringer, “middle of lesson” activity, or exit ticket/reflection.

Photo screenshot of selecting a question type in Pear Deck — Image Source: **Get the Pear Deck Google Slides Add-On**

Pear Deck for STAAR Practice

Just for a moment, think about how much better a student’s formal assessments might be if they had (1) direct engagement in more effective learning discussions; (2) more frequent practicing of test-type questions in the viewing of a bell ringer or exit ticket; (3) were consistently held accountable for their learning. We can all agree that’s a combination for a winning hand!

In Texas this year, the hot news for educators in grades 3-12 is the STAAR redesign. The newly redesigned question formats affect every tested subject associated with these grade levels. How does Pear Deck connect to the latest STAAR? One of its fascinating features is the ability to construct diversified questioning. We can create questions that align with the new type of STAAR questions so students can practice as often as teachers like in a learning environment that isn’t directly associated with a formal assessment. Whether it’s questions that involve text response, number response, multiple choice (with more than one choice selection), or drawing and draggable style answer choices, you can customize Pear Deck templates for any of these question types. This can help prepare students for success with accommodating strategies that will enable mastery of these redesign questions in a manner that best challenges and satisfies their academic level of students.

Interactive Learning

Interactive learning is a teaching method that supports educators by taking a hands-on approach to engaging students. Through this technique, there is social interaction between the educator and the learner (Interactive Learning Project, 2020). In other words, instead of teachers taking complete control and driving the instruction, becoming exhausted and frustrated trying to keep students engaged, the paradigm switches. Students no longer become passive participants. Instead, they become active participants and involve themselves as part of the conversation/discussion that’s taking place in the classroom. John Hattie’s effect size for direct instruction, classroom discussion, and feedback is a combination for great success. Pear Deck for Google Slides is a catalyst for increasing more robust academic success in your classroom. How? Great question! The following Pear Deck Infographic details the benefits of using Pear Deck as an engaging tool, as well as HOW TO power up your presentations for the classroom.

What Can a Pear Deck Lesson Look Like?

Beginning of Lesson

Depending on your class’s academic level or the content being learned, you may choose a bell ringer from Pear Deck’s Content Orchard template library that poses a question for students to answer with written expression, respond with a draggable slide, or draw a response.

During Lesson

As educators, we know the effects engagement has on learning. This article in Reading Rockets demonstrates the importance of students being actively engaged and not just compliant. Pear Deck promotes the qualities necessary to ensure every student is engaged and accountable for their learning. Whether you choose a multiple choice slide, draggable slide, or short answer response slide, you can get your students’ attention from start to finish.

End of Lesson

Exit tickets are informal assessments that hold students accountable for their learning. Pear Deck’s Content Orchard has sample templates that allow teachers to insert exit tickets into their Google Slides presentation. Having the ability to pick from several different types, along with customizing the exit ticket based on the content, makes the task easy and effective.

I hope this information sparks your interest in using Pear Deck to engage students in interactive learning. How will you use it in your classroom?

Additional Resources

How to Make Interactive Google Slides with Pear Deck
The Pear Deck Content Orchard
Pear Deck Help Videos for Getting Started
Increase Student Engagement with Pear Deck TechNotes Article

January 3, 2023 0 comment

Content Areas Good Teaching

Dicebreakers and Activity Debriefing Templates

by Miguel Guhlin December 16, 2021

written by Miguel Guhlin

If you’re needing to bring people together in a new situation, then ice breakers are one way to do that. If you’re wanting to encourage self-assessment and reflection, entry and exit tickets can work wonders. But a different type of icebreaker and reflection tool can also be handy: the dicebreaker and the dice debrief.

Dice Activities as Icebreakers

You may already know that icebreakers are great tools. You can find TCEA’s ebook, Digital Icebreakers That Shatter, for free online. And, of course, a TechNotes collection of blog entries explores various icebreaker activities.

An NCBI study reveals that icebreaker activities:

Encourage participants to bond and form a new team
Get people from different backgrounds to meet
Invite others to become involved with learning about new subject matter
Help the group leader become acquainted with the participants and interpersonal interactions within the group
Yield observed information on the group’s dynamics, which can assist group leaders in tailoring lessons to group needs

How Dicebreakers Work

**View** or **get your own copy** of these graphics via Google Slides.

The process for setting up a dicebreaker is simple:

Since the printed dot count ranges from one to six, assign each number of dots an activity or question for a total of six.
Pass out or share a die with each group of students. If using stations, you can place a die at each station, then have students roll that die upon arriving.
When students roll a number, they share their coordinating response with others at the station or in the group.

Consider using a dicebreaker grid like the one shown below. Rachael Mann (@RachaelEdu) shared a similar version that inspired this recreation via Twitter. She suggests using VirtuWorld.net’s Roll an Online Die for this. “I do not know who to credit for the ice breaker grid,” Rachael says.

Want a list of digital dice? Be sure to read Peggy Reimers’ Try Your Luck with Five Free Virtual Dice blog entry. Dice can be used for many activities and games in the classroom. Discover five virtual dice options you can use with your students today.

I’ve taken the liberty of remaking it with modifications.

Here’s one example of dicebreakers in action:

Dice Activities for Self-Judgement and Reflection

You can use dice debriefing activities as entry or exit tickets, for example, to engage students in self-judgement and reflection. Known as self-judgment, research has shown its importance as it enjoys an effect size of 0.75 (as of John Hattie’s latest research). Self-judgement and reflection have the potential to “considerably accelerate” student achievement. It is proven effective when students self-assess knowledge before learning and then reflect and self-evaluate for understanding post-learning.

Connect with Elizabeth Vanderveen Heinrich. Inside-Outside Circle twist on the @TCEA Dicebreaker warm-up activity. Transitions back from holiday break and getting everyone talking is a win. Special thanks to teacher Elizabeth Vanderveen Heinrich – Source: https://tinyurl.com/tceadbe1

There are several strategies you can take advantage of in the classroom. Each can make self-judgement and reflection a daily occurrence, even routine, and you can use dice debrief activities to engage students this way.

View or get your own copy of this graphic via Google Slides

Dice Debrief Questions

Here are a few debrief questions you can use in a dice debrief:

What did you learn today?
Why does what you learned matter?
List three big ideas you got out of today’s lesson.
What process did you go through today? Did it work? Why or why not?
What resources (e.g. books, websites) did you use today?
Did what you write or make meet your goals?
How do you feel about your work today? Why?
What would you change or do differently?

Additionally, such activities work well as entry tickets when you ask questions like:

What do you think we’ll be learning about today?
What do you already know about this topic?
What areas would you like to learn more about?
What predictions (or guesses) can you make about what you will be learning today?
How do you feel about this subject?
What are some areas you might need help in?

You can also adapt ideas from this blog entry on bell ringers. How could you adapt exit tickets for this fun variation?

There are many different ways to approach dice debrief. Stephanie Howell (@mrshowell24) shared one way in this Google Doc. She offers this video:

For fun, I took a stab at making a few templates of dice debriefs as well. Thanks for the inspiration, Stephanie!

4th graders learning more about each other and kicking off fitness class with “dicebreakers.” Special thanks to OJR Elementary Health and PE. Source: https://tinyurl.com/tceadbe2

Need More Inspiration?

You may have found these templates useful, but there are many more online. A Roll and Respond list of questions caught my eye. It included questions such as:

What are you looking forward to?
What are you looking forward to doing?
If you could spend an hour with someone, who would it be?
If you could have something to help, what would it be?
How would you describe this idea to an alien from outer space?
How is this the same or different?

Find some more ideas in this Wakelet collection, Dicey Learning.

Dicey Learning: A Wakelet Collection

BONUS Activity: Roll a Story

You can also use dice to incite and guide creative writing. Create your own Roll a Story like the one below:

Why don’t you give making your own dicebreakers or dice debriefs a go? Do you have any other ideas or ways you’ve used dice in your classroom? Please share with us in the comments, and if you try any of the activities mentioned today, let me know how it goes.

The header graphic was made with Sketchpad. Get the Sketchpad file via this link, save, and open via the Sketchpad website.

But, Wait, There’s More!

Several of you have taken the DiceBreakers/Debrief templates and made your own. Below, you will find a few that have been shared:

Elizabeth Vanderveen Heinrich’s Dicebreaker Grid

December 16, 2021 0 comment

Educational Research Good Teaching

Bell Ringers for Improved Retention and Engagement

by Miguel Guhlin August 18, 2021

written by Miguel Guhlin

If you wish you had an easy way to engage students, the author of Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning by Judy Willis, M.D., offers suggestions for taking every student’s attention intake filter into account. Suggestions include influencing the Reticular Activating System (RAS) in our brains, and in today’s post, we will explore how brain-based bell ringers can improve retention and engagement.

What Are Bell Ringers?

Bell ringers are activities that students do as they walk into class and wait for the bell to ring. According to practitioners, this “bell work,” as it’s known to some, has benefits including but not limited to:

Engaging students in short assignments or assessments
Reviewing key concepts already taught
Stimulating classroom discussion that supports the lesson
Identifying misconceptions and misunderstandings learners may have

There is a lot more information out there about why bell ringers are beneficial. Reviewing brain-based research can give us insight into what types of bell ringers will be most beneficial for students. Let’s take a look.

What’s the Brain-Based Research Connection?

A part of our brain, known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS), works as an information filter. According to Dr. Willis, the RAS allows only one percent of the information to filter through. That’s right; your attention intake filters block millions of bits of information, keeping out the irrelevant. According to the author, this presents a challenge for teachers because it prevents students from paying attention to and retaining what is being taught.

Let’s now examine how we get critical knowledge and information past this attention filter to retain as much as possible.

Designing Bell Ringers

Since learning relies on what gets past the attention filter, bell work must help the information sink in. To do this, bell ringer activities should engage students in new, unusual, or unexpected ways. Using curiosity, prediction, or metacognition (the CPM process) to review, revisit, practice, and assess skills and concepts that were previously taught or to present new information that students may not normally retain can be highly effective.

Before exploring the CPM process, know that you can find a wide variety of bell ringers or bell work online. In fact, I’ve included links to over 400 bell work examples in the graphic below. And, of course, you can follow the Twitter hashtag for more #bellwork.

bell ringers

View clickable version of this infographic – https://tinyurl.com/tceabellringers

When you’re ready to design bell work, remember that you can take several approaches, including one which involves practice testing. This is an evidence-based strategy (i.e. retrieval practice) featured in several previous TechNotes’ blog entries. Consider this diagram from Joel Toomer (@ToomerTeach):

bell work

Another approach could be to use bell work as a way to engage students’ curiosity. To do this, use bell work to kick off a learning experience. Then, facilitate the CPM process. This process, as adapted from Dr. Willis’ work, might look like this:

CPM

As you may know, metacognitive strategies such as prediction are evidence-based, and play a key role for self-regulated learners. Prediction works to sustain curiosity, consequently deepening the learning. What’s more, it makes the learning more desirable and memorable. Our brains want to know the outcome, which is why this strategy works. When students make predictions about their learning, they remember more as a result.

You can extend learning with metacognition during bell ringer activities. One way to do this is by having students keep notes about their learning, write down questions they may be curious about, or note predictions related to the bell work.

Entry Ticket Bell Ringers

Using entry tickets as bell ringers makes reviewing and introducing concepts easy. You can learn more about entry tickets by exploring the Wakelet collection below.

bell ringers

View the Wakelet Collection

Using bell work is a great way to engage learners as class starts, especially using metacognitive strategies to spark curiosity and invite predictions in new and exciting ways. I hope you find these resources helpful in implementing effective, brain-based bell ringers in your classroom.

August 18, 2021 0 comment