CLEVELAND – TeachingBooks.net today announced a unique collaboration with Pear Deck, providing expanded opportunities for student engagement and learning. In this new collaboration, Pear Deck takes book-specific supplemental materials from TeachingBooks and creates a custom, interactive lesson. When used with the Sora student reading app, a complete interactive literacy experience is created that engages students of all ages and provides unique learning opportunities. All TeachingBooks templates, as well as Pear Deck’s other content, are available for free at Pear Deck’s Content Orchard.
“By partnering with TeachingBooks and Sora, we’re bringing free, ready-to-teach literacy lessons to teachers and learners, furthering Pear Deck’s mission to create powerful learning moments for every student, every day,” said Stacy Yung, a former teacher and Senior Instructional Designer at GoGuardian, parent company of Pear Deck. “Reading is a strong lever in building a community in the classroom. We’re confident that this partnership will increase access to engaging lessons that help students connect with books, gain new insights and improve understanding, ultimately building deeper love of reading.”
With Pear Deck, now part of leading digital learning company GoGuardian, educators can transform lessons into impactful formative assessments and active learning experiences that seamlessly integrate with learning management systems. Templates, quick-start activities and ready-to-teach lessons connect students across all grades and subjects. TeachingBooks offers high-quality instructional assets such as author interviews and cultural reflection prompts that help educators bring books to life. The Sora student reading app is the leading digital book platform for schools that helps students read or listen to school-selected ebooks and audiobooks, 24/7 on any device. Sora offers the largest collection of premium materials used for instruction, novel sets and choice reading, including the most in-demand and beloved books and authors such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Great Gatsby. All three platforms offer free access to a “starter set” or “introductory catalog” as well as paid content options. California educators already have premium access to TeachingBooks.net via the State Library of California and the California K-12 Online Content Project.
This new collaboration creates a holistic reading journey beginning with the Sora student reading app. Sora provides schools free access to popular and educational ebooks, audiobooks and read-alongs from the Sora Starter collection as well as titles in each school’s individual collection. Within the Pear Deck platform, educators can then supplement these digital books with TeachingBooks’ videos, author interviews, games and interactive discussions. Pear Deck’s TeachingBooks templates include dynamic resources and instructional guidance, offer replicable, bite-sized interactive activities designed to connect students deeply with the book as well as gain new insights and understanding from the author before, during and after reading the title.
Included in this new collection of Pear Deck Orchard templates is TeachingBooks’ exclusive “Cultural Representation Reflection” activity. Designed to encourage readers of all levels to pause and reflect on the cultural representation of characters, setting and events in the books they read, students interactively compare and contrast their own experiences with elements of a book or story.
“We developed this lesson with the goal of helping students discover a broader understanding of an inclusive society when reading any book, and maybe see what they might not have noticed before,” said Nick Glass, Founder and Head of TeachingBooks. “These lessons are offered in three levels to encourage students of all ages and levels to dive in and consider the representation of culture within a favorite book.” Activities within the Pear Deck Orchard version include drawing, Venn diagrams and guided reflection.
For more information about Pear Deck, visit https://www.peardeck.com/. For more information about TeachingBooks, visit TeachingBooks.net/OverDrive. For more information about the Sora app for schools, visit https://discoversora.com.
About TeachingBooks
TeachingBooks is an engaging collection of resources that brings children’s and young adult’s books to life. With access to hundreds of thousands of materials including original author interviews, video book trailers, discussion questions, vocabulary lists, interactive games and more, 55,000 schools and libraries have received more than 70 million unique investigations since August 2020. Awarded the Best Digital App of 2020 by the American Association of School Librarians and the 2021 Common Sense Education Selection for Learning, TeachingBooks was founded in 2000 and is in Madison, Wisconsin USA. TeachingBooks was acquired by OverDrive in 2021. www.TeachingBooks.net
About OverDrive Education and the Sora student reading app
OverDrive Education, a division of OverDrive, offers the largest catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, digital magazines and other content for over 59,000 K-12 schools and millions of students worldwide. The Sora student reading app, named one of TIME’s Best Inventions, provides every student with access to the right books and supports the need for required curriculum titles, class sets and pleasure reading. TeachingBooks.net (acquired in 2021) complements Sora with one of the largest catalogs of supplemental resources that “bring books to life.” Founded in 1986, OverDrive – which also provides digital content to public, academic and corporate libraries – is based in Cleveland, Ohio USA.
www.overdrive.com/schools
About GoGuardian
GoGuardian aims to help all learners feel ready and inspired to solve the world’s greatest challenges by combining the best in learning and science technology across every part of the learning journey. Our award-winning system of educational tools, which includes Giant Steps, Pear Deck, and GoGuardian Teacher for learning engagement; Edulastic for formative assessments; TutorMe for virtual on-demand tutoring; and GoGuardian Admin and Beacon to support student safety, is purpose-built for K-12 and trusted by school leaders to promote effective teaching and equitable engagement while empowering educators to help keep students safe. Learn more at goguardian.com.
Author Recent Posts eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals. Latest posts by eSchool News Staff (see all)
