Peardeck Novel Groups
Book Clubs changed my life. I had dabbled with them in Spanish 2, but it was the combination with Peardeck that made managing my larger, wilder classes last year possible.
In any class, there are kids who need their hands held every minute. But they’re kids. Hold their hands until they actually feel confident enough to walk on their own (it’s always confidence, not “bad kids”). Also in any class, there are kids who want you to leave them alone, let them do their thing. If they’re ready, let them do the dang thing. Any class will also have its extroverts who HAVE to talk, if only to get their ideas out. They should be able to talk.
Here’s how that works with Peardeck.
Forming groups
Just as I did with the book clubs, I surveyed my students with a Google Form. I sent the responses to a spreadsheet, and sorted by their reading preferences: most picked alone or in groups. I knew there were some who needed my group anyway, so I picked those out of the rest first, trying to keep the number around ten–twelve tops. Whatever I could fit within my reading range while I was seated, basically. Then I started separating the “groups” category, just going down the list, either adding them to a created group or starting a new one if there were more than four (or a reason to separate the next in line–usually chatting).
(small groups were off camera to the right)
Student-paced Peardeck
Something really useful I discovered was how to set Peardeck to student-paced mode, which is super easy once you figure it out. I find it’s best to create a session for each class ahead of time, but I also have been known to use one session for a whole A Day and one for B Days then sort exported responses by time.
- Open app.peardeck.com.
- Go to the Sessions tab.
- Click on the 3 menu dots at the far right of the file you want to assign.
- Select “Turn On Student-Paced.”
- Click on the session title and then choose “Open Projector”
- Then click “Give Students a Link” and it’s ready to paste into a Google Classroom assignment!
Responsibilities
Independents knew what they had to do. I modeled all types of questions with them, from text response, to multiple choice, to doodled depictions. Their job was to work quietly, and if they finished, work on Duolingo or Señor Wooly. If they finished that, well, they could work on another class (I think it may have come that once or twice).
Groups were one of my bigger challenges, not because they didn’t finish their work–they were sometimes done before the speed demons on the independent side. It’s just their chatting got so LOUD sometimes–though still frequently on-topic! It made it hard for me to focus on my group. A suggestion my tech coach colleague made was to appoint leaders and regroup (though I never got around to that).
MY group? My group was a hoot. They got to crack all of the (topical) jokes they needed to get their peers’ approval and hold their interest, and I made sure I gave them the answers out loud, sometimes on the screen, AND in the book. Those who got behind were quickly chastised by the others who overall kept up. It gave me a chance to just BE with those kids, something I found to be the only solution for my own kid a while back.
All groups had to have the answers submitted by the next day, so if they got behind for whatever reason, well, guess that means homework.
Results
Informal scores steadily went up and several students were able to shine for their success within their smaller environments. Also: I still had a repository of cute doodles and summaries from which I could draw review materials for later!
The best part for me, though, was having a routine that meant I could easily prepare ahead and just relax that much more into the story for a while.
It truly saved my sanity last year!
