PearDeck Attempt #2

I tried out a new PearDeck today in my two honors level classes to introduce imperialism. This PearDeck was developed by a colleague of mine in PLC and I made some adjustments based on my classroom and goals. However, I really loved that he incorporated a word association activity to help develop the concept of imperialism. I would have never thought to do this myself, however, it was really engaging for my students and they seem to really understand the concept of imperialism better than before. In addition, the activity asked students to preview a new skill goal for the unit: political cartoon analysis. Students were given a variety of imperialism political cartoons and used the circle feature to point out what they thought was the most important portion of the cartoon. This led to a lot of active discussion, and generally high levels of engagement. I think to use it with my CP level class, I'll have to adjust for the length of the deck. In the middle, several students were chatty and off task. I decided to give them a "tech break" so they could stretch, check their phones, and talk to their peers. Then we re-engaged. Again, the few slides that contained content were the biggest flops, and even though there was a follow-up question, students tended to zone out the most in these sections. Perhaps next time I will limit this type of slide even further.